Teaching, Living, and Learning: CHEERFUL GIVING

Thursday, January 31, 2013

CHEERFUL GIVING

"Overflow", oil on board, by Don Gray

I often find myself giving in a grumpy way, as if I get only so many gifts myself and can’t afford to give any to others. It’s a strange way to behave, since beautiful favors are given to me with great permissiveness moment by moment, so many that my life seems always overloaded with luck and blessings. I should share what I have the way the sun shares light, unreservedly and steadily. For example, I have thoughts that are endlessly given to me by some stroke of good fortune, and I should find it pure fun to give them away the way winds give away their freshness. Also, feelings are forever flowing into me from somewhere, and they, too, can be shared in an unselfish way. I can furnish others with fun and reassurance and a sense of security, simply because I have so much of them myself. I’m overflowing with good fortune, swarming and bursting with it, so why not parcel it out to other people with cheers?

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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