Teaching, Living, and Learning: FRESH RUNNING UNIVERSE

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

FRESH RUNNING UNIVERSE

"The Bathroom Sink", oil, by Elizabeth Fraser

I still find it fairly stunning to simply turn a tap and see fresh water instantly start running, but of course, it's the way the entire

universe works, so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising. The universe flows for me in limitless and instant ways. Doesn't fresh oxygen flood into my bloodstream with every breath, and don't thoughts flow forever through my mind, and doesn't the light of the sun stream across the world each day, and aren't all the measureless stars always racing along? The universe can't be turned off. Some kind of wind, soft or strong, is always sweeping around our houses, and feelings of all sorts are steadily surging through us. There are times when the water taps in my house are shut off, but the taps of the universe are always fully open. Sunlight is always somewhere, shining with its fullness, and ideas are always cascading, with affluence and freshness, through these rushing lives of ours.

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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