Teaching, Living, and Learning: HIDDEN WORDS AND WONDERS

Friday, April 05, 2013

HIDDEN WORDS AND WONDERS

"Shadows of April", oil, by Don Gray

Yesterday, as the dentist was doing some work on my teeth, I studied a hidden-word puzzle on the ceiling, and soon, as the drill droned on, I was thinking of other hidden surprises in my life, the little wonders that wait by the thousands for me to find them. As I thought about it, it began to seem possible that all the moments in a day are made of useful surprises, small shocks that have the power to uplift a life. A day could be compared to a puzzle in which wonders wait beneath the seemingly humdrum happenings. I thought perhaps I could be like a scout searching a wilderness of secret treasures. As the dentist did his work, my day-to-day life started to seem like a stirring escapade, a journey among unseen jewels and gems.

They were just words concealed among letters on the ceiling, but they helped me have a look into the fortune-filled life I’m lucky to be living, even when I'm stretched out in a dentist's chair.

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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