Teaching, Living, and Learning

Monday, May 11, 2009

Teaching Journal

Day 141, Monday, May 11, 2009

I introduced some new technology in my classes today (a way to do web-based text annotations), and it led me to think about the actual meaning of the word. My etymology dictionary tells me that the word 'technology' comes from the Greek word teknos, meaning “system” or “method”, and this helps me understand why technology has been so helpful this year. It’s been a way to better systematize my teaching, a way to make the overall ‘method’ (or plan) of my teaching more visible to the students (and to me). Technology has not been merely frivolous ‘bells and whistles’ for me; it’s been more like master-planning than doing tricks. Because of the technology tools I’ve employed this year, I’m a more orderly and structured teacher. Technology has unleashed far more discipline in me than creativity. It’s given me more organization than trickery, more methodical techniques than decorative gimmicks.

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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