Letter to Teachers

(This my post on Facebook to all my fellow teachers as schools begin their new year. The photo is from a walk in a bird refuge in Arcadia, Michigan. You can read the Rilke poem in my earlier post, The Swan)

 

Happy New Year to all my fellow teachers far and wide as you begin teaching school yet again! Each turn of the wheel is a new beginning, a chance to renew hope and re-dedicate ourselves to the most important job on the planet— the care of children. We teachers are often marginalized, misunderstood, expected to carry the burdens the rest of the culture has neglected, made to jump through hoops that lead nowhere, all for low pay and little status. Nevertheless, we persist, out of our love for the children, for our craft, for our community, determined to honor the past worthy of preservation and create the future the past failed to reach. 

Rilke’s poem “The Swan” describes how the swan who lumbers clumsily on the land instantly becomes elegant and regal in the water. And so children, force-marched through the unfriendly landscape of schools run by people who don’t know them and love them, appear as clumsy and awkward creatures estranged from their natural habitat. But once a teacher invites them into the flowing waters of play, humor, discovery and artful imagination, watch how they swim with such grace and beauty. 

Both today’s teachers and students often have to waddle through the mined landscape of submitted lesson plans, test results and now yet more horrific desperate moves to outlaw truth in the classroom. Let us resist and organize and support each other. But first and foremost, let the water flow when you close the door to your classroom and be astounded. Let us lead our precious children toward the future they deserve, like the swans in these flowing waters.