Teaching, Living, and Learning

Friday, July 20, 2012

Surviving the heat in St. Louis! We flew yesterday into 100+ temperatures, and have been braving it all by keeping ourselves inside in air-conditioned places (which is almost every place). Dinner last night with brother Al and Mary Anne in a Greek cafe, then early to bed in our refreshingly cool hotel room beside the airport.

This morning we took a delightful walk in Forest Park in surprisingly cool temperatures. We both enjoyed the various views in this loveliest of city parks -- hilltops terraced with fully-tended flower gardens, small streams loaded with lily blossoms, and the many man-made paths for walkers and riders. Breakfast with Susie and Kent at a quaint cafe in the Central West End, then three of my brothers and I brought our family memories to a lunch at Schlafley's beer garden in Maplewood. Dinner tonight with Pete and BeBe.

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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