Читать книгу A Montessori Mother онлайн

16 страница из 51

She lingered beside us some moments, chatting with my companion, who was an old friend of hers, and who introduced her as Signorina Ballerini. I noticed that she happened to stand all the time with her back to the children, feeling apparently none of that lion-tamer’s instinct to keep an hypnotic eye on the little animals which is so marked in our instructors. I can remember distinctly that there was for us school-children actually a different feel to the air and a strange look on the familiar school-furniture during those infrequent intervals when the teacher was called for an instant from the room and left us, as in a suddenly rarefied atmosphere, giddy with the removal of the pressure of her eye; but when this teacher turned about casually to face the room again, these children did not seem to notice either that she had stopped looking at them or that she was now doing it again.

We used to know, as by a sixth sense, exactly where, at any moment, the teacher was, and a sudden movement on her part would have made us all start as violently and as instinctively as little chicks at the sudden shadow of a hawk ... and this, although we were often very fond indeed of our teachers. Remembering this, I noticed with surprise that often, when one of these little ones lifted his face from his work to ask the teacher a question, he had been so unconscious of her presence during his concentration on his enterprise that he did not know in the least where to look, and sent his eager eyes roving over the big room in a search for her, which ended in such a sudden flash of joy at discovering her that I felt again a pang of envy for this woman who had so many more loving children than I have.