It’s back to school time and I am nowhere near the classroom…since retiring. Yet, my heart goes out to today’s teachers- the demands and commands of the school-community environment are ever morphing. This poem reflects on when I started teaching. Kids had only books. Now it’s laptops and sophisticated technology. Teachers wrote on the chalkboard. Now they use interactive Smartboards. Oh, it feels good to be repositioned to a new season of reflection in my life.
Began her first day at a school for at risks
complete with cracked walls and ragged
books. Boy, someone said was she in for a
treat, didn’t know who was doing anything
about the crime of miseducation but she
believed she could make a difference, told
herself think positive breathe in DEEPLY
Ah… picked up the chalk wrote on the
board called on a quiet child to pass out
books that way the students need only open
their books and write, no time for foolishness’
it worked today but tomorrow who knows.
Glendal Wallace -Poet and Author 