Teaching, Living, and Learning

Sunday, August 02, 2009

"Summer Surf", oil, by Joe Mancuso

Yesterday was as unsullied and sunlit a summer day as anyone could want. I celebrated it with, first, a brisk 30-minute climb up and down the stairs in the park, then back home for a veggie omelet spiced with Worcestershire sauce and Tobasco, then some pleasant editing of my teaching journal, then a little laid-back reading, followed by a seafood salad sandwich and icy milk for lunch, then an uplifting bike ride out to the beach for an hour of fun with my sons in the rowdy surf, then an unruffled ride back home to get ready for an evening at school for a reunion of scholars and colleagues from long ago, then back home through the evening streets for a glass of Chardonnay and a look at the news and the Red Sox.

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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