The blinds are in!

The blinds are in!!                                ANOTHER CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!!

The dust is out!!                               

I see them and                                       FIRST A/C, and now BLINDS!!!!!!!!!!!

I start to shout!

I feel a need

To clean the room

I grab the dustpan

Grab the broom

But no, the email's

Piling up

and meetings ever 

Fill my cup

Appointments

Taking all my time

And grading papers

It's a crime

That blinds so lovely

Show a space

with oh so much

That's out of place

I need a day 

I'll come tomorrow,

A Saturday

(a bit of sorrow)

then realize

that NO I can't

I have to sit 

and watch my aunt

while parents visit

far away

and so no cleaning

is that day

And every time

I think I can

Something pops up

oh man oh man

It's been two weeks

My blinds so new

I can't give them

their proper due

but even though

my room is not

what they deserve

I'm often caught

with dreamy eye

and happy smile

It's been so long, 

It's been a while

since something lovely

and pristine

no kid has marred

so new and clean

has been inside 

this bungalow

(constructed in

19-oh-fo')

and though my room 

does not deserve

the blinds I promise

to preserve

their loveliness

and someday soon

Ill get in here

and clean this room

1. 
   

A Haiku Series Advocating Student Diplomacy in the Face of Missing Class

Based on a true evening email exchange between myself and a student:

STUDENT:
I have been absent--
Did I miss anything that was
important today?

TEACHER:
Can you find a way
to ask without implying
my class wastes your time?

I am off to bed.
In response to your question,
the answer is "yes."
 ---------------

Of course, sometimes I tell these offenders that Beyonce performed for our class. Or that we all took naps. And when the kid gives me the "C'mon, tell me what really happened" face I tell them the truth: I taught my guts out and they can get notes from another kid and hope another person can explain to them what they've missed. 

Sometimes students expect a private tutoring session. Am I a bad teacher for refusing to do that? For refusing to try to encapsulate what took me 55 minutes of extraordinary effort to teach? To recreate for an audience of one what I orchestrated the day before for an audience of 159 in five classes? 

I obviously don't think so. It wasn't the student's fault she was sick, but those sorts of losses are not the kind we can just restore with five minutes and a pat on the head. The losses are real. The book can tell the kids the basics.  The book cannot recreate our conversation, our inquiries, our interactions. The book does not crack dumb jokes or pose useful analogies to help kids make connections the way I do. The book cannot explain what it means the way I do in a class. Insofar as explaining after school something that a student didn't understand in class, that's fine with me, and I am eager to do so--unless the said kid was busy not paying attention. 


Here's another teacher who was moved to write a poem:

Did I Miss Anything?

Tom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
     Everything. I gave an exam worth
     40 percent of the grade for this term
     and assigned some reading due today
     on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
     worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
     Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
     a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
     or other heavenly being appeared
     and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
     to attain divine wisdom in this life and
     the hereafter
     This is the last time the class will meet
     before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
          on earth.
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
     Everything. Contained in this classroom
     is a microcosm of human experience
     assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
     This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
          gathered
     but it was one place
     And you weren’t here

From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993
Harbour Publishing

Copyright 1993 Tom Wayman.
All rights reserved.

Teaching Is a Scream

He has alopecia...AND five times as much personality as the average person

Sometimes
  my eyes fill a little
  spill a little

Sometimes
   my heart beats a little quicker
   feels a little bigger

Unless you have taught
   and been hopelessly caught
   by the fun and the joys
   of these girls and these boys....

You
really
can't
possibly
understand
that my job
is truly
the best in the land.

All Aboard!

It really is often like this...

We are starting a new year and I need to remember my true calling and my true Captain. I can't stop reading this sonnet and applying it to the school year, especially the public school year. I haven't been excited AT ALL about this coming year, perhaps because last year was my best ever, but this poem inspires me in a way that nothing has so far, not even the aisles of The Container Store or the techniques in Teach Like a Champion or having a spanking-clean and ready room:

The Call of the Disciples 
by sonnet master Malcolm Guite

He calls us all to step aboard his ship.
Take the adventure on this morning's wing,
Raise sail with him, launch out into the deep,
Whatever storms or floods are threatening.
If faith gives way to doubt, or love to fear,
Then, as on Galilee, we'll rouse the Lord,
For he is always with us and will hear,
And make our peace with his creative Word,
Who made us, loved us, formed us and has set
All his beloved lovers in an ark;
Borne upwards by his Spirit, we will float
Above the rising waves, the falling dark,
As fellow pilgrims, driven toward that haven,
Where all will be redeemed, fulfilled forgiven.

(In search of more curricular inspiration, I will be watching Stand and Deliver sometime this three-day weekend before the ship sets sail on Tuesday....)

So THAT'S why...three of 'em....

Little nodules in my throats
Little nodules gets my goats
Little nodules isn't noice
Little nodules takes my voice

Size of salt grains, all you is.
Cut yous out? "Oh, no," is his
opinion--get some rest and then
your voices should come backs again

But this my jobs, my livelihoods!
If I can't talk, that ain't no goods!
He signed me up for speech rehabs
They 'spose to teach me how to blabs
More easy- how to use my chords
efficientsly. And so towards
this goal of resting nodules,  I
won't say no mores. (At leasts I'll try.)

Doc says mine aren't symmetrical, which is unusual.

A Bad Morning, A Kiss and Two Poems

It doesn't happen often, really only about once a year, and who knows why. Perhaps it's a convergence of gravitation, weather, hormones, CST testing dread, a strange dream, and the usual sad Padre win-loss record, but comes an odd day when I simply do. not. want. to. go in that classroom and face anyone. That day was yesterday.

Before school, I shared my dread with my close colleagues. "I don't wanna be that whiny teacher," I whined. A. listened with love and her eyes didn't judge me. K. commiserated and made me laugh, even when I shared that part of my low is my persistent belief that education can transform EVERYONE into Lola's ideal of a Fine Human Being with Noble Character Who Loves Reading when the disappointing truth is that the Bell Curve of Life indicates that a large portion of the population will forever gravitate toward daytime reality TV and hangovers. And this crushes me.

Of course I got on with it. The Compromise of 1850 wasn't going to teach itself. As usual, teaching itself became its own reward as I turned away from me to them and the task at hand.

Then it was time for my seminar English class--and two boys, D. and I., had spent their own money to buy Hershey bars for everyone in class! Their final flourish was to hand me a gigantical Hershey's kiss. Of course my heart grew three sizes.

And then it was time for Haiku Friends!! That's right--we are studying poetry, and for fun, students were assigned a fellow student to write about. I collected their little poems, read them aloud, and the students guessed the subjects. It was delightful and yet another time of bonding with this really wonderful class, but as I read the last one, C. rushed up to me waving one last haiku:

"Hamilton's girlfriend

In third grade, Calhoun punched her

Educates many"

I'm a big Alexander Hamilton fan--I'd told them of the day when Doug hit me--C had written a poem about me! For laughs? So I wouldn't feel left out? Because he was enjoying our time together? All good.

And then after school, I found my colleague K. had put a poem in my mailbox:

Maybe Dats Your Pwoblem Too by James Hall

All my pwoblems
who knows, maybe evwybody's pwoblems
is due to da fact, due to da awful twuth
dat I am SPIDERMAN.
I know. I know. All da dumb jokes:
No flies on you, ha ha,
and da ones about what do I do wit all
doze extwa legs in bed. Well, dat's funny yeah.
But you twy being
SPIDERMAN for a month or two. Go ahead.

You get doze cwazy calls fwom da
Gubbener askin you to twap some booglar who's
only twying to wip off color T.V. sets.
Now, what do I cawre about T.V. sets?
But I pull on da suit, da stinkin suit,
wit da sucker cups on da fingers,
and get my wopes and wittle bundle of
equipment and den I go flying like cwazy
acwoss da town fwom woof top to woof top.

Till der he is. Some poor dumb color T.V. slob
and I fall on him and we westle a widdle
until I get him all woped. So big deal.

You tink when you SPIDERMAN
der's sometin big going to happen to you.
Well, I tell you what. It don't happen dat way.
Nuttin happens. Gubbener calls, I go.
Bwing him to powice, Gubbener calls again,
like dat over and over.

I tink I twy sometin diffunt. I tink I twy
sometin excitin like wacing cawrs. Sometin to make
my heart beat at a difwent wate.
But den you just can't quit being sometin like
SPIDERMAN.
You SPIDERMAN for life. Fowever. I can't even
buin my suit. It won't buin. It's fwame wesistent.
So maybe dat's youwr pwoblem too, who knows.
Maybe dat's da whole pwoblem wif evwytin.
Nobody can buin der suits, dey all fwame wesistent.
Who knows?

.... I realized that K. understood, that James Hall understood: My suit won't come off and sometimes that's my pwoblem. I am SPIDERMAN FOR LIFE, and sometimes trying to save the world--or even just one thirteen year old--gets a little discouraging or even tiresome. But I am here to testify that the generous big hearts of boys and the power of compassion and poetry are transformative. The odd day is over, and I know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing, and that changes everything.

...by Taylor Mali

Slam poet and former teacher Taylor Mali answers the question.

Click HERE for the slightly edited version of his passionate poem, "What Teachers Make".

fly

today they were beautiful:
their shiny plumage rainbow splashing;
some shy in splendor,
some amazed at what the mirror showed--
all beloved

and when they came round the corner,
music swelling,
they gasped
to see the lovers looking on;
eyes widened (some filled)
to see the lovers straining for a glimpse

today they spread their wings
to fly
and we, the lovers, faces upturned in wonder,
clapped our empty hands and blessed them, precious and beloved, every one

poetry.

"Are we going to do poetry?" asked M., one of the seminar kids. Yep. Very soon. Next week, even.

That's one of the few units I feel confident about. I have the master teacher's poetry binder, and she has laid it out so beautifully. I nabbed notebooks so we can make our own poetry anthologies. I am thinking when we all write poems, we should print multiple copies so our classmates can add the original poems to their collections. We wrote Poe-inspired poems a while back, and some were amazing.

Our district is heavy on poetic forms. That's fine. Poetry always asserts itself.

I am scared of handling the (few) kids who might not get into poetry. I guess I'll just trust the power of the word and the passion of the poetry lovers. Oh, and of music lyrics...

Writer's Notebooks & a Literary Gift

I'm grading them. Just a modest stack, because the class is tiny--only 27. Of course there are two space cadets with lame excuses. But I am reading S's, and she shared part of Langston Hughes' "Freedom's Plow" with me--wrote it out on her own, even.  And though there is a part of me, a cynical calloused part that has worked decades with Artful Dodgers, less-than-honest 8th graders too long to believe that everyone who shares stuff with the teacher does it without a hidden Eddie Haskell motive, I believe this girl is for real.  She wrote out these first few stanzas:

Freedom's Plow

When a man starts out with nothing, When a man starts out with his hands Empty, but clean, When a man starts to build a world, He starts first with himself And the faith that is in his heart- The strength there, The will there to build. First in the heart is the dream- Then the mind starts seeking a way. His eyes look out on the world, On the great wooded world, On the rich soil of the world, On the rivers of the world. The eyes see there materials for building, See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles. The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles. The hand seeks tools to cut the wood, To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters. Then the hand seeks other hands to help, A community of hands to help- Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone, But a community dream. Not my dream alone, but our dream. Not my world alone, But your world and my world, Belonging to all the hands who build. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And I read this and got tears in my eyes because this is my September Dream. Every year without fail, I want this community dream. I want Us. I want Ours. I look at the rich soil and the woods, the obstacles, all these students and their potential and challenges...the September Dream drives me on for moments like this, infinite in potential and awash with kid love. I have the best job in the world. I get to be with people like S.

best sub ever?*

It was the last day before vacation
and all through the class
the kids were all quiet, no whispers, no sass,
The sub held them all in the palm of his hand
He was determined they'd all understand
the Kansas-Nebraska Act on this last day
before the kids were released--yes, he'd have his say
And I, the regular teacher, came back for some papers
was happy to see no child cutting capers
And they turned in their chairs, their eyes shining bright
"Miss M!" all broad smiles that were laced with delight
As I gathered my papers and strode out the school
I yelled,"Have a great week!" and thought, "My job is so cool!"

* and he was fine, too!