—for all teachers, past, present, and future

I’m standing at the door of my classroom on the first day of school. My hand is on the door handle, and my school bag is slung over my shoulder when I realize that I’m scantily clothed. Actually, I’ve come to school wearing only my underwear (and they’re not even professional-looking underwear at that). This is but one of the many pre-school nightmares that ravaged my sleep for 40 years in the weeks before school started. I’d wake up sweat-drenched. My heart would race until I’d remember that I didn’t have to go to school that day, that I had two precious weeks to prepare until school started. And then the next night, the nightmares would begin again.

If I were to make a top-ten list of these nightmares, they’d include things like agreeing to teach a section of advanced music theory (I quit taking piano in 1967!) or trigonometry (I maxed out in geometry, 10th grade!); showing up to teach on the wrong day or in the wrong building/classroom (What? This isn’t Tuesday? This isn’t Room 159?); and wearing an awful pair of slippers I’d received as a gift and should’ve immediately donated to Goodwill (Shark slippers, Grandma? Really?)

Actually, I did once return from a break during a night class at the community college, inadvertently entered the classroom of a colleague, and began teaching a group of students who didn’t recognize me from Adam. And I did once teach an entire day with blue mimeograph ink streaked across the left side of my face. Not one student or colleague revealed this to me, and I had to discover this painful reality when I checked my rearview mirror to back out of the college parking lot at the end of the day. These experiences–and others–confirmed that my nightmares were real forces to be reckoned with and that they could (gasp!) come true.

Today’s teachers, however, may experience pre-school nightmares that I never once imagined. I could conjure up some attempts at humorous ones: sneezing violently onto your face shield and peering at your students through a smattering of your own snot; discovering that you have no fingerprints after weeks of using industrial-strength cleaning supplies to disinfect your classroom; struggling to make any real conversation unless it includes an in-depth discussion of social distancing. I could attempt to laugh at potential scenarios like this, but I won’t because these scenarios are more probable than possible. Sadly, face shields/masks, disinfectants, and social distancing guidelines will NOT be the stuff that foolish nightmares are made of; they will be the real stuff that makes up “ordinary” school life.

And so it goes without saying that the dread that ravages the nights and days of most teachers is legitimate dread. As if creating and delivering excellent, relevant lessons weren’t enough. As if developing and maintaining positive relationships weren’t enough. As if attending to the educational, social, emotional, and psychological needs of students weren’t enough. As if preparing a welcoming school environment (largely with your own funds) weren’t enough. As if mentoring new colleagues and collaborating with others weren’t enough. Now, add to this list a guarantee that you will protect your students from a virus that persists and shows no real signs of leaving.

In the past few months, I’ve listened to those who’ve argued passionately about the real need to reorganize law enforcement agencies, who’ve suggested that we might use other professionals to assist in addressing social, emotional, medical, and psychological issues. We often ask law enforcement officers to perform tasks and take responsbility for scenarios that most have never been trained to handle. So, too, our teachers. We ask them to be content, instructional, and assessment specialists. We ask them to be social workers and mental health experts. We ask them to be counselors, friends, custodians, leaders, team-players, fundraisers, make-doers, role models, mediators, and all-around upstanding citizens.

And now–the pièce de ré·sis·tance–they are essential workers on the pandemic front lines. The fact that most will assume this role with grace, conviction, and courage shouldn’t go unnoticed, but I fear that it will. Perhaps my greatest dread today is that this role will quietly and permanently join the burgeoning list of teacher responsibilities and that we won’t have a national conversation about what teachers should reasonably be responsible for and what they should not.

School will go on, as it must. Whether it’s in-person, five days a week, hybrid, or online, teachers will lead the charge. But I’d like all the teachers out there to know that there are those of us who understand that this season’s dread is real and that we can only reminisce about the good ol’ days when our worst nightmares were those of showing up to school in our skivvies.

photo by Collyn Ware

When the Moon is Your Muse
     --for Gracyn
 
You hold the moon in your hands.
Because at eleven, it all seems possible
when the moon is your muse,
when all the world’s wonder is just a lunar length away,
when all its golden honey spills down your arms
and spreads across the earth
with abandon.
 
When the moon is your muse,
you welcome the night
whose dark corners are flooded with light enough
to scare the goblins away.
 
When the moon is your muse,
dreams dot the sky like quicksilver,
like fireflies eager to take their place
among the stars.
 
Oh, there will be time enough
for fruitless hours of work and dread
that march in with hawkish bluster,
eclipsing all that’s dear and pure.
There will be time enough
for nights which settle upon you like shrouds,
lead-footed and cold.
 
But on moonlit nights
when your muse offers her best,
you open your heart in hallowed expectation,
as all the trees genuflect, tipping their moon-glazed tops
to earth.

Photo by Collyn Ware

Beneath the Willow
--for Collyn

Not much grows beneath the willow.
Its leafy umbrella keeps out the sun,
so that the earth beneath it is moist
and barren.
Even the fungi have turned up their noses
at this spot, where light is always
compromised.
 
On the best days, the sun dapples a way
through branches which skim the earth
like a processional train.
 
But make no mistake:
there is an entire world here
beneath the willow.
You would know this if you push aside the green curtain
and enter.
Once there, your eyes—as eyes will—
struggle to adjust to the darkness of a summer afternoon.
 
But take the advice of one who has lived a thousand lifetimes there:
you do not need eyes to see what you have come to see.
So close your eyes.
It matters little—eyes open or closed—in this world
beneath the willow tree.
 
Outside, the sun shines as it must,
calling the blossoms and hours into sharp focus,
and the day inches on 
fraught with duty.
 
But beneath the willow tree,
you can try on different lives,
casting aside the rumpled remnants of one
in favor of another.
 
Here, you can do-over
and over.
 
Here, you can paint the sky apricot
and offer your heart, as open as a summer meadow,
to a world that always receives it
tenderly.
 
Here, the darkness is a feather bed
in which you can lay your weary worries,
and the oughts and musts have voices so small
that they are drowned in song.
 
Beneath the willow tree,
each day breaks in delirium,
a joy so generous that even the dirt
smiles.
 
So pass by if you will.
Give the willow a nod as you speed
towards somewhere.
 
As for me,
I will spend a thousand lifetimes here,
each one more splendid than the last.

The Summer Tanagers

live deep within the timber.
At dusk, they call to each other
warbling to welcome the night.
 
If you stand silently near the timber’s edge
you might see one:
 
a blood-orange jewel lying in the hollow
just at the base of summer’s throat.
 
Or you might follow their love songs into the tree tops—
blinking and refocusing,
scanning and rescanning,
 
to no avail.
 
Perhaps another time
when the sun is just beginning to set
and the last light floods a pocket in the upper story
where a single tanager sits.
 
Perhaps a moment when you forget
to try, when you simply look up
and there, on the limb of a young linden,
a summer tanager sits.
 
Or perhaps a dream
in which your lover calls to you,
his heart a blood-orange beacon
in the dark.