Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Teaching

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“Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The learning process is something you can incite, 

literally incite, like a riot.” 

― Audre Lorde

“If you don't have a policy against nonsense you can wind up with a dozen timid little rabbits lined up in the hall outside your office, all waiting to whisper the same imbecilic question in your ear.” 

― Ann Patchett

“I urge you to be teachers so that you can join with children as the co-collaborators in a plot to build a little place of ecstasy and poetry and gentle joy” 

― Jonathan Kozol

Midweek Motif ~ Teaching

"World Teachers’ Day held annually on 5 October, is a UNESCO initiative, a day devoted to appreciating, assessing, and improving the educators of the world. The real point is to provide a time to look at and address issues pertaining to teachers."

What is teaching?  If it has issues and joys and sorrows, what are they?  Beyond all the questions are only our impressions . . . and our respect.   I found teaching to be a marvelous interaction with other beings, most of them human.

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem that reveals teaching from your experience as teacher, student or observer.

Excerpt from Ego

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BY DENISE DUHAMEL

I just didn’t get it—

even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand

and a lemon (the moon) in the other,

her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.

I just couldn’t grasp it—

this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly

no one could even see themselves moving.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Excerpt from Immigrant Blues

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BY LI-YOUNG LEEUse Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

People have been trying to kill me since I was born, 

a man tells his son, trying to explain 

the wisdom of learning a second tongue. 

It’s an old story from the previous century 

about my father and me. 

The same old story from yesterday morning 

about me and my son. 

It’s called “Survival Strategies 

and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.” 

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,” 

called “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.” 

Practice until you feel 

the language inside you, says the man. 

But what does he know about inside and outside, 

my father who was spared nothing 

in spite of the languages he used? 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Excerpt from Teaching English from 

an Old Composition Book

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BY GARY SOTO

My chalk is no longer than a chip of fingernail, 

Chip by which I must explain this Monday 

Night the verbs “to get;” “to wear,” “to cut.” 

I’m not given much, these tired students, 

Knuckle-wrapped from work as roofers, 

Sour from scrubbing toilets and pedestal sinks. 

I’m given this room with five windows, 

A coffee machine, a piano with busted strings, 

The music of how we feel as the sun falls, 

Exhausted from keeping up. 

                                       I stand at 

The blackboard. The chalk is worn to a hangnail, 

Nearly gone, the dust of some educational bone. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 
in the spirit of the community.

 ( Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~   Wealth )