Mixed Poetry Contest--I Came to Teach

In 1994 I was at a crossroads in my life. I felt desperate-desperate for a job and for work that impassioned me; desperate to change my routine and surroundings; desperate for adventure; desperate to do the uncomfortable and to risk what is safe for the uncertain; and, for once in my life, run away from sensible advice. So in a hasty moment in mid-August (1994), I resigned from a comfortable college teaching position; moved across the entire state of Texas; and found myself inside my first high school classroom teaching freshman English and British Literature. The poem that follows is one I wrote at the end of that first year. “Let the beauty of what you love, be what you do.” Rumi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I came to teach, to see what I could find inside my students’ deeper selves. I came to try and open minds before they were sewn shut. I came to channel passages, hoping to connect hearts to heads and hands. I came to entreat, to coax ennobled thoughts, ideals, and love of self and others. I thought that this must come from inside out into the essence of their beings, into relationships, as connections to words and deeds, and pedagogic styles. I came to probe, and sometimes poke, to make them think, and laugh at small and narrowed views. I wanted them to see with their own eyes, beyond the limitations of closed perceptions into the beauty and the pain of others’ views. I came to teach, but learned instead that they had just as much to say to me. Their lessons were often raw, sometimes uninformed and yet complex. I came to give and yet was given, for through their gifts, I saw anew that I must learn to guard against complacency, conclusions, and the allure that ends too soon. I came to grow, unknowingly to shed my false, scholarly skin and metamorphose into to something new and strange – something far beyond the shadows of my old instructive self. I came to teach but was changed in other ways, and now remember that life is still a two-way street. These were lessons I needed to learn. Perhaps it is enough to say, I came to teach but learned instead.