Teaching, Living, and Learning: STRENGTH AND GLADNESS

Thursday, July 21, 2011

STRENGTH AND GLADNESS

"Prairie School", oil, by Don Gray

No student, I’m sure, feels especially glad to be coming down the hall to my English class, but I actually hope, in all honesty, that some small amount of mental strength might be gained during class, which in turn might create some real satisfaction, perhaps even gladness. If each student, for instance, could sense something new inside them during English class, some unusual understanding, some small insight into the mysteries of written words, this could possibly produce a silent, private shout of good cheer. If the students, each in their special ways, could find a further appreciation of some aspect of the literature we read, then maybe an honest bit of strength and gladness might be given them during a modest English class in Room 2 on Barnes Road.

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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