Teaching, Living, and Learning: THE GENTLE SPIRIT

Monday, December 12, 2011

THE GENTLE SPIRIT

“… the gentle spirit of moving words …”
-- Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

I love this quote, mostly because it makes me feel like I’m doing something significant when I speak to my students with quietness and kindness. I rarely raise my voice in class, not because I don’t sometimes dislike my students’ behavior, but because soft, expressive words spoken with seriousness and purpose can present much more power than words raised up in displeasure. “The gentle spirit” of peaceful and unobtrusive words can work calm wonders, whereas words hurled like lances usually simply light the fires of misunderstanding and resentment. Especially if I can speak “moving words” – those that move the thoughts and feelings of my students the way soft, steady rains move rivers – I find that I can softly force the students to adjust their behaviors. In fact, I often picture myself as either a soothing sunrise or an easygoing fall of rain in the classroom, both of which can calm any of us as we work our way through a life or an English lesson.

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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