Teaching, Living, and Learning

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

PERFECTLY LOUSY TEACHING

(written on October 26, 2005)

I was beating myself up this morning because I thought my teaching yesterday was lousy, but that’s a little like saying the Universe did a lousy job with the weather yesterday. The Universe doesn’t make a mistake, and I am part of that Universe. Whatever weather the Universe produces on a given day is precisely the weather it needs to keep itself going. Even if we can’t see or understand the correctness and aptness of the weather, the Universe sees it, and that’s what matters. The same is true in my teaching. I taught the way I did yesterday because that’s what the Universe (sometimes called God) wanted me to do. In the very biggest picture of all, what happened in my room yesterday was perfect. If I see it as less than perfect, it’s because I’m looking at it from the tiniest of perspectives. I’m seeing the small picture of my individual, material life, instead of the vast, harmonious, and perfect picture the Universe (God) sees.

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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