Teaching, Living, and Learning

Saturday, August 25, 2007

A news item about my son

from the Norwich Bulletin, August 22, 2007

PLAINFIELD --James Salsich, a teacher at Plainfield Central School, recently was recognized as one of the nation's most innovative educators in the 2007 ING Unsung Heroes awards program.

Salsich was one of 100 winners who received a $2,000 award to help fund his innovative idea and bring it to life in the classroom.

He now will compete with other winners for one of the top three prizes -- an additional $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000.

The ING Unsung Heroes awards program recognizes kindergarten through grade 12 educators nationwide for their innovative teaching methods, creative educational projects and ability to positively influence the children they teach.

Since honoring its first unsung hero in 1996, ING has awarded $2.8 million to nearly 1,200 educators across the United States. The 2007 ING Unsung Heroes winners were selected from a group of more than 1,400 applications.

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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