Poem: February 20, 2019

Raw Learning

for Krissy Venosdale

To go to school should be to step through the looking glass,
to find a forest at the back of the wardrobe, to join a fellowship,
to have a door crash down and discover you're a wizard.

Our education should require our entire being, our minds
that hatch the ideas that catch our breath, that ask the questions,
our hands that wrestle the world, feel the resistance of the tape roll.

Teaching should be an act of service to hundreds of daily wonders,
to our students who carry their lights in their open hands. We should
see the flickering ambition, the dancing self and ask, "How may I help?"

Every classroom should call to mind the magic of a dandelion,
the satisfaction of a barn-raising,  the tethered ache of friendship.
A classroom should be raw and unpredictable and as serious as life.

Learning should be the rooting through of caves and the crossing
of creek beds, and the solving of riddles, and the fashioning of tools,
and the listening to silence, and the wiping away of dust to discover oneself.