Teaching, Living, and Learning

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

ONE YEAR WITH AN ENGLISH TEACHER

Day 162, the last day of class, June 3, 2008

Today I tried my best to end the year by bringing it all back around to the beginning, just as I ask the students to do in their essays. I told them a “joke of the day”, just as I did on the first day and every other day, and I showed them my hand-drawn “picture of the day”, just as I did on September 4th and throughout the year. As I did on the first day, I explained the “lesson” for the day, which was a review of the year, looking back to see where we have come from and what milestones we passed along the way. I ended this final class by singing the same song I sang on the first day of English class back in the late summer of ‘07, a rendition of Louie Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World”, with my own lyrics dedicated to the students. As in an essay, I tried my best to tie the year into a neat and completed package. I wonder what grade I should get.

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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