Teaching, Living, and Learning

Thursday, July 12, 2007

CHABLIS AND SUBWAY

The Tour de France started today in the village of Chablis (see pictures), and passed through Chateau Chinon, where the 9^th graders and I spend a pleasant day a few years ago.

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Yesterday evening I rode over to Shaws to get some groceries, and then stopped at Subway to pick up a sandwich for dinner. It was a good ride over a relatively new route, up and down some hidden back-roads of town. I’m not sure I had ever been on some of these streets, so it was good to discover a new part of town. The neighborhoods were peacefully quiet places, and the streets were nearly empty of traffic, which made for a carefree ride. There were some decent hills, though, and I rode up and down a few of them several times, just to give myself a satisfactory workout. The cool air-conditioning of Shaws, and, later, the delicious sandwich at home were fair rewards for a somewhat tiring ride.

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Today I read my dictionary and thesaurus for a while. Honestly, I don’t own two more rewarding books. When I feel like slowing down and actually doing some serious thinking, they are the books I go to.

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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."

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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