Teaching, Living, and Learning

Monday, August 31, 2009

AN UNHURRIED TEACHER

As I look forward to the new school year, the word “unhurried” comes to mind as a description of the kind of teaching I hope to do. I don’t want to rush through a lesson, run through a review, sprint through a ‘to do’ list, or charge ahead with impulsive words and actions. I want to do everything the way the sun rises: slowly, peacefully, beautifully. There’s never any need for urgency in teaching English to teenagers. The planet will continue turning whether I cover three or six or zero comma rules in a class period. Our hearts will continue beating and our trillion cells will keep being reborn no matter what happens (or doesn’t happen) in 8^th grade English class on Barnes Road. Nothing need be done except with patient attentiveness and consideration. Flowers can’t be hastened into blooming before their proper time, nor can good teaching be rushed. I must make each 60 seconds in class be utterly comprehensive and satisfying. All the moments in Room 2 will be priceless ones, so I may as well slow down and be grateful for each one.

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett