Teaching, Living, and Learning: IT IS GOOD FOR ME TO BE HERE

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

IT IS GOOD FOR ME TO BE HERE

Yesterday I overheard someone say, “It is good for me to be here”, and I thought, Yes it is – always. There’s always something special, something useful and even shining, in every place and situation, if only I will let myself see it. I suppose some of the distinctiveness derives from the fact that wherever I happen to be is wherever I must be at that particular moment. I can be somewhere else one second from now, but right now – and every right now – it is absolutely necessary for me to be wherever I am. It’s as if each moment is an immaculate and private place prepared just for me – a place where wisdom waits with its gifts. If the place seems sad or scary, wisdom sometimes sets its greatest gifts at the precise center of trouble, and insight can shine brightest inside a disaster. Even if my life seems to be shaking with concerns and sorrow, it is good for me to be there, for I can always find some freedom I’ve never felt before right where I am, right where the universe has placed me at this well-timed and eminent moment.

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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