Teaching, Living, and Learning: A LUCKY GUY

Thursday, January 26, 2012

A LUCKY GUY

I’ve known this for years, but it’s always worth saying again: I am a lucky guy. Here are a few proofs: I’m sitting, at this moment, in a pleasantly snug house on a frosty morning, a lamp is lighting the room in a warm way, my best friend is near and never far away, my classroom in a kindhearted school is waiting for me, the students will show me the blessings of their special lives, breezes will bend the branches of trees, birds will flutter at the feeder, far-off towns and cities will send their high-spirits to the skies, distant stars will always shine, while I’m in a welcoming room walking coolheadedly through books with my students. Again: I am a lucky guy.

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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