Teaching, Living, and Learning: DANIEL DERONDA

Friday, March 05, 2010

DANIEL DERONDA

Things have really picked up in the last few chapters. I whole new thread of plot has entered the story, involving Daniel Deronda himself, a compassionate nephew of Sir Hugo Mallinger (and thus a cousin of Mallinger Grandcourt). Deronda rescues a young Jewish girl from drowning herself, and takes her for shelter to the home of his best friend's family. Deronda appears to be a wise, sensitive, and loving young man, and I'm suddenly very interested in how his role will play out with the rich, refined, and rather "boring" people of the first part of the book, especially Gwendolyn Harleth.

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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