In America
Kids are always the battle ground
What they read
What we teach them
How we raise them
Yet in our hubris
We allowed 8 million of them
To be stricken with grief
You see
We were too busy arguing
To care about the consequence
Category: Teaching
Empty checkboxes
And a mind that’s zig zagging
Still manage to impress
From the outside in
Yet I have never mastered
Impressing myself
Categories
The great resignation
A simple reminder:
Toxic relationships are
Not just reserved
For lovers
They can be an entity, a corporation
A job
Even a Vice
Before you leave it’s like
Sucking all air through a straw
Colors are muted, and gray
But once you’re free…
The world is as bright as a birthday cake
And equally exciting.
With clarity and ease
I watched you speed through your work.
Learning is what drove you. Impatient, yes
Lovable too. Independent yet kind.
And with such a sweet tooth.
Radiant and all human. Bright and naive.
Death won’t take what you were to us.
Plunking piano
A chiffon haze fills the room
Muscles stretch and tense
I rise on my toes
A ballerina wannabe
Watching professionals
The typing of keys
The rustling of paper notes
Soft murmured questions
Intensity’s high
When students are writing
Snow brings the trouble
The kids smell change in the air
Their noses upturned
Minds whirring with plots
It begins innocently
A white rush of air
A splash of cold snow
Suddenly, it’s a frenzy
Mounds crisscross the yard
Showering the kids
All with red noses and smiles
Hands cold and frozen
Rejoicing in the weather
Until the adults swarm in
To end the melee
Please, make no mistake
New laws that attack our schools
Are not “for the parents.
That’s propaganda
Parents are often
Invited into the class
Lessons are often
Already online.
No. These laws show lawmakers
Who they can target
Thinly veiled attempts
To root out the teachers who
Teach real history
Because you see friends…
Education is power
Education is change
Education is discussion
Education is critical thinking.
Being educated
Shouldn’t be easy.
Education is a reckoning
And that should feel uncomfortable.
Categories
Unintended consequences?
The consequences
Of the pandemic
Will be hard to count…
However, it’s clear
That the main victims are kids
They are in shambles
First, online schooling
Then, rolling quarantines and
Sick family members
We’ve expected them
To be strong. Meanwhile adults
Kept failing the kids.
Don’t @ me on this
I know we’ve all done our best
Closing school was right.
Here is my real point
We’ve asked our kids to adapt
While leaving no tools
In their school toolbox
They are alone in the wild
Because schools didn’t adjust
To the trauma of the kids
Twelve of twenty-five
Students absent in my class
It’s not a mask thing
They all have COVID
It’s spreading so quickly that
I see in real time
The sickness take hold
And worsen over the day
The worst part of this
Is that so many don’t care
But kids are suffering
Hipstory 