Teaching, Living, and Learning: SOME CANDLE CLEAR

Thursday, October 25, 2012

SOME CANDLE CLEAR

“Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by.”

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Candle Indoors”

I love these words of Hopkins, mostly because they bring to mind the brightness of this world I live and work in. They speak of the shining lights that look out from each situation I’m in and each person I come into contact with. The world around me is sunny with the wisdom of the universe, splendid with the clear illumination of intelligence. Just sitting in a small chair beside a window is enough to show me the glow of this grand life I’m living. A single streetlight outside in the morning darkness is a symbol of the light that lives in every second, every place, every person that passes by as the day brings its offerings to 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