Teaching, Living, and Learning: SUDDENNESS IN ENGLISH CLASS

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

SUDDENNESS IN ENGLISH CLASS

When I looked up the word “sudden” in a dictionary this morning, I found this definition -- “occurring or done quickly and unexpectedly or without warning, as in a sudden bright flash” – and it immediately came to me that suddenness is something I constantly witness in my classes. There are sudden bright flashes moment by moment as my students and I make thoughts with the speed of strings of firecrackers. All our thoughts are completely unexpected, popping up in our minds like surprises, one exploding thought preparing the way for the next. Each thought is as swift as a sparkle of light -- a glint and then it’s gone. A 48-minute class is a spectacle of suddenness. Even the looks on our faces change with the speed of shadows under windswept trees, and feelings flow in and out of us so fast we can’t possibly appreciate them all. It’s good, I guess, that I encourage the students to work with slowness and consideration, but at the same time I know that suddenness is the supervisor of all of us.

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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