Spontaneous Applause
Up close view of a quilled reproduction of Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses
Dear Parents,
Outside my office is a little waiting area. There are three chairs, a small chest of drawers, and a quilled reproduction of Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses that was created by the 8th grade class of 2021. Students occasionally sit there to reset themselves or wait to talk to me.
A few weeks ago, it was a crying student who sat down beyond my door while I met with a teacher. I investigated what the hubbub was about—the student was upset by a section in the class’s literature book, Black Beauty, and needed a few minutes to recover.
At Ambleside, we read books together from cover to cover. At funny parts, everyone laughs together, at suspenseful parts, all are on the edge of their seats, and at sad parts, like the instance above, people cry. I remember getting choked up myself on a couple of occasions when I was teaching 8th grade. The first time was when we were reading The Scarlet Pimpernel and Sir Percey was desperately trying to woo his wife back. The second was in The Hiding Place when Corrie went to see her sister Betsie who had just passed away.
In these moments, we are all building memories together, and many a class, at the conclusion of a book, has been known to break out in spontaneous applause.
Pure joy.
These shared experiences, as you can imagine, have a wonderful impact on the atmosphere in the classroom. As I mentioned in my letter last month, school atmosphere was one of the key educational elements I was considering when looking for schools for my son prior to kindergarten.
“Atmosphere” was a word I felt God had put in my spirit, but it wasn’t something that I had ever thought about before. What could be different from classroom to classroom? I wondered. Paint color? Aren’t all schools basically the same?
At an Ambleside open house event many years ago, I noticed that their classrooms did indeed look different. Nice wooden desks were used instead of the institutional looking ones. Framed reproductions hung on the walls instead of technicolored posters. The bookcases were filled with books, not docking stations for tablets or laptops. Curtains hung on the windows, plants sat all around, and area rugs were in the back of the rooms.
It certainly was lovely—the Ambleside aesthetic is what I now call it—but is that all that atmosphere is? Decorations?
Let the notably different appearance of our classrooms be an indicator of what lies beneath the surface. What makes our atmosphere more advanced than traditional school classrooms is the common pursuit of knowledge that occurs between teacher and class.
When a class opens a living book together and reads it all the way through, not alone as homework, but together, they are bonding over something that is worthy of their time, attention, and affection. This is but one example among a thousand in an Ambleside classroom where we are everyday discovering the world around us with enthusiasm and curiosity.
And sometimes, spontaneous applause.
Charlotte Mason wrote in A Philosophy of Education that one result of the common pursuit of knowledge is shared joy. All enjoy gathering knowledge together. This common pursuit of knowledge “creates a current of fresh air perceptible even to the chance visitor, who sees the glow of intellectual life and moral health on the faces of teachers and children alike.”
Just as the earth is bursting forth with color and life in the blossoming spring around us, so are the effects of this “fresh air” on the mind and countenance of a child bathed daily in an atmosphere of shared joy.
When I see the unmistakable effects of this “fresh air” atmosphere—in a cherry blossom and in the classroom—spontaneous applause feels like the only proper response.
For the children’s sake,
Krise Nowak, M.Ed.
Head of School