Teaching, Living, and Learning: THE LIGHT SHINES

Friday, July 22, 2011

THE LIGHT SHINES

"The Shapes of Sunrise", oil, by V...Vaughn

Every so often I’m tempted to turn off the lights in my classroom and just let the light of thoughts throw its brightness over all of us. After all, there is light, and then there is light, and the light of freshly made ideas makes fluorescent light look dim by comparison. It’s strange to me that my mania for “getting things done” in class sometimes causes me to be blind to the light of the thinking that’s always happening. My students and I can’t stop thinking new thoughts any more than our lungs can stop causing new air to come into our bodies. Each moment of English class is a sunrise of thoughts, a silent explosion of concepts, notions, images, schemes, plans, feelings, and beliefs – more than enough light to let all of us stretch out and grow strong in its influence. The light of thought always shines in English class, whether we see it or not, whether we feel its soft and fulfilling pressure or not.

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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