Teaching, Living, and Learning: RUSH RENEWALS

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

RUSH RENEWALS

""Spring Renewal", oil,
by Kit Hevron Mahoney

I sometimes receive renewal notices from magazines, and occasionally the word “RUSH” stands out on the notice, sometimes reminding me that other kinds of renewals are always rushing towards me. Actually, the entire universe is constantly renewing itself, whether I send back notices or not. Each second is a fresh and unsullied one, sent from the center of the universe straight to me and to each of us. Every moment is new- made, ultra-modern, and in mint condition. The little lamp on my desk has never sat just the way it is sitting now, and the stars spread across the sky are shining in slightly new ways from yesterday, and from ten seconds ago. I’m a new, state-of-the-art 71-year-old every moment, and all of our lives, and all stars and streets and mountains and atoms in the air, are -- lucky for us -- on automatic renewal.

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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