Teaching, Living, and Learning

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The patio through a screen

The wood-splitting place


The buried house

Ah, the blizzards of this winter! Already we have had two whoppers, the last one at least 19 inches worth. Jaimie and I and the kids kicked up our heels a bit as we braved the cold winds and went sledding down the fast backyard slope. We also spent some good times indoors with puzzles and games and make-believe adventures with dolls and dragons. Today was a quiet day, though, with just Jaimie and I enjoying the silence surrounding the little stone house in the woods. (I did, as I usually do, about 30 minutes of wood splitting for our trustworthy stove.)

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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