Teaching, Living, and Learning: CRUISE CONTROL IN THE CLASSROOM

Sunday, April 10, 2011

CRUISE CONTROL IN THE CLASSROOM

"Country Road", oil, by Heidi Malott

In most ways, I don’t think I can be said to “cruise” when I’m teaching, but occasionally I do find myself in a coasting or sailing disposition as I’m working with my students – and I like the feeling. These are times when whatever is happening in the classroom seems to have been brought into existence just for us -- as though the universe is serving up, each succeeding moment, precisely what is best for my students and me. These are times when worries about goals gradually give way to a simple and sincere confidence that the flow of my teaching is, at least for now, perfect. This is when I feel like I’m in cruise control – like the teaching is taking care of itself. It’s “coasting” at its best – not loafing and letting anything happen, but simply sitting back and seeing the power of learning and teaching take off. Cruise control is a fine way to see the country in a car, and it’s not a bad way to bring kids and a teacher together in an easy, graceful search for understanding.

No comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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