TEACHING AT NIAGARA FALLS

"Waterfall", oil, by Delilah Smith

Today I should feel a kind of delight as I go about the business of teaching, for a power of immense peacefulness will be prevailing over all that happens. Unfortunately, I rarely remember this truth. As I concentrate on carrying out my lesson plans and controlling the flow of my classes, I tend to forget that thought actually controls everything that happens in my room. From the smallest event to the most significant, everything occurs because thought, or consciousness, is ceaselessly at work. My classroom is like an infinite fountain of ideas, and it is that fountain which rules the room every minute of every day. It’s an astonishing fact to meditate on, and to picture. I can see in my mind, not 36 individual material bodies, but, each moment, 36 innovative, ground-breaking, state-of-the-art thoughts. I once calculated that approximately 450,000 ideas come into being in my classroom every day – a magnificent surge of thoughts that are constantly reshaping the lives of my students and me. Perhaps it would help, today, if I see in my mind something like Niagara Falls, with its astonishing flow of water, and remind myself that I teach in a “Niagara Falls” classroom. There is as much – and much more – power in my classroom each day as there is at those famous falls. The immeasurable universe is ceaselessly spinning along, creating almost half a million ideas in little Room 2 in Pine Point School. I probably should just sit back and be amazed by it all, just as I would stare in wonder at Niagara Falls flowing over its cliffs.