Poetry About Teaching
What's your favorite poem about being a teacher? Here are a few offerings.
I’m heading back “home” to Canada for a few weeks. So, I won’t be publishing much, sharing much in July. Back in August and hopefully my teaching batteries will be renewed.
Not a happy trip, unfortunately. But at least the weather will be nice. One of the things I’ll be taking care of while there is packing up all my notebooks, my books of poetry and part of my personal library. It’s been at our family farm and I need to get these documents of who I am, the life I’ve lived - somewhere else.
[If interested in lesson resources related to poetry, see this prior post, also our “poetry” tag in the Lesson Library and in particular, check out this book of Grammar Poems. Of course, so many poems on our YouTube channel.]
Preparing for this trip got me thinking about some of the poems that have sat with me, stood the challenge of time and informed my teaching, helping me make sense of my teaching, the job I do. As Auden said, and so many forget the last part — “Poetry makes nothing happen, it survives.”
Here is a nice book I edited, a collection of poetry about teaching, for teachers. It has my favorites and few of my own poems about teaching. On my personal substack - find more of what I write, if interested.
Besides the poems in this book, I’ll leave you with a few I’ve written about teaching. All 3 true stories. (this one, The Job Interview, is too long - find here)
Enjoy your summer, hope you too get some time to recharge the teaching batteries!
An English Student’s First Phone Message (true story).
“I just called to let my lips speak to your ear. Your machine speaks well English! I will call tomorrow when I find your ear. My lips are lonely to be hard. Thank you for not listening to forget my massage.”
Snezenka, a student and Croatian newcomer to Canada, left me this on my answering machine. It had me going through my memories for details about a “massage” until I realized she’d meant “message”.
They Are Learning More Than You Think
Friday afternoon, základní škola Jana Palacha
and it’s a class of pre-teen boys
disinterested in anything I’ve got to say
and they all’ve got their elastic bands
ready for classroom amusement.
Me? I’m at the chalkboard, wet rag in hand
telling them of the delightful oddities that
the past participle of English possesses,
everyone chanting in unison as I dream of
the beers awaiting me at the local hospody.
I finally give up, having dodged enough elastic bands.
It’s Friday after all and so I announce the boys
can play board games while ensuring I’m doing
my job by adding that the rule is
”Everyone must speak English!”.
They all seem fine about that and quickly
they are rolling dice and frantically moving their pieces
except for Martin, he’s sitting alone, pouting.
I go over and ask,
”Martin, co delas? What’s up?”
”Why aren’t you playing the board game?”
“Teacher” he replies, in a serious tone.
”Bored game!”
