Education

~ Back to School ~

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          For most of my life, my year started with school in September.  Whether teacher or student, September was that magical transition from whatever else I was doing into a focus on education. And I loved it.  I looked forward to it each year, sometimes with a little trepidation and an increasing awareness that learning didn't require a school at all.  But maybe you have the opposite experience, where school is increasingly dissatisfying or even horrid?  Or maybe you have had the fortunate experience of being able to ignore the start up of school altogether, and continue learning outside the classroom?

What is your first response to this prompt?  Is it a specific memory?  Trust it!  That's where your poem begins . . .  

Inspiration

Ode to Teachers

BY PAT MORA

I remember

the first day,

how I looked down,

hoping you wouldn't see

me,

and when I glanced up,

I saw your smile

shining like a soft light

from deep inside you.

“I'm listening,” you encourage us.

“Come on!

Join our conversation,

let us hear your neon certainties,

thorny doubts, tangled angers,”

but for weeks I hid inside.

I read and reread your notes

praising

my writing,

and you whispered,

“We need you

and your stories

and questions

that like a fresh path

will take us to new vistas.”

Slowly, your faith grew

into my courage

and for you—

instead of handing you

a note or apple or flowers—

I raised my hand.

I carry your smile

and faith inside like I carry

my dog's face,

my sister's laugh,

creamy melodies,

the softness of sunrise,

steady blessings of stars,

autumn smell of gingerbread,

the security of a sweater on a chilly day.

Pat Mora, "Ode To Teachers" from Dizzy in Your Eyes. Copyright © 2010 by Pat Mora. 

AN OLD MAN'S THOUGHT OF SCHOOL 

by Walt Whitman

[The following poem was recited personally by th​e author, Walt Whitman, Saturday afternoon, October 31, [1876?] at the​ inauguration of the fine new Cooper Public School, Camden, New Jersey:]An old man's thought of school;An old man, gathering youthful memories and 
  blooms that youth itself cannot,Now only do I know you!O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the 
  grass!And these I see—these sparkling eyes,These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives,Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal 
  ships!Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,On the Soul's voyage.Only a lot of boys and girls?Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?Only a public school?Ah! more—infinitely more;(As George Fox rais'd his warning cry, "Is it this 
  pile of brick and mortar—these dead floors, 
  windows, rails—you call the church?Why this is not the church at all—the church is 
  living, ever living souls.")And you, America,Cast you the real reckoning for your present?The lights and shadows of your future—good or evil?This Union multiform, with all its dazzling hopes 
  and terrible fears?Look deeper, nearer, earlier far—provide ahead— 
  counsel in time;Not to your verdicts of election days—not to your 
  voters look,To girlhood, boyhood look—the teacher and the 
  school.

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