Teaching, Living, and Learning

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

ONE YEAR WITH AN ENGLISH TEACHER

Day 143, Tuesday, May 06, 2008

I made a small discovery today which might help me become a better teacher. Instead of typing out my weekly writing assignment, I wrote it carefully on the board and asked the kids to copy it into their plan books. We discussed each part of the assignment as they were writing, and I told them I would leave it on the board all week. They seemed to write it down carefully, and they appeared to like the idea that it would be there to refer to each day.

Perhaps I should do this more often. It apparently worked well for the kids, and it definitely saved paper.

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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