Teaching, Living, and Learning

Thursday, May 22, 2008

LOOKING FOR WONDROUS THINGS

Thursday, May 22, 2008

“For thou art great, and doest wondrous things.”

--Psalm 86:10

In a way, the passage above is not all that surprising. We know that amazing events do happen now and then – events that are so remarkable as to elicit disbelief. Fabulous things occasionally occur – a winning lottery ticket, an unbelievable sunset, a marvelous phone call from an old friend. Every so often the unbelievable enters our lives like an explosion of goodness. However, what I want to think about today is the truth that the above passage implies – that wondrous things are happening all the time. The psalmist is suggesting that the miraculous and the astonishing are woven into the very cloth of life. The Universe (the power the psalmist calls “thou”) is magnificent and does stupendous things every second All things are astounding. Each moment is a new birth that should bring amazement and bewilderment to my heart. I should walk around in a daze of incredulity.

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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