Tomorrow is my last day. I looked for the poem I thought would speak most eloquently to the role teachers can play. Bettye T. Spinner wrote this lovely poem. What if our classrooms were poetry meant to be lived and learned? It would speak to the wonder and awe of each day we spend with children.
In the ideal
it is harvesting
the work we do–
a reaping of crops grown
from ancestral seeds,
a gathering of first fruit,
from vines that traces their sources
beyond geography,
beyond gender,
beyond the bleach
and blush
and black of skin
and root themselves in watery grace,
in knowledge that nurtures us all.
In the ideal
our classrooms fill, like cornucopia,
overflowing with the bounty of our grange.
Life stories, heaped among the texts,
spill into hallways of our schools,
crowd the sidewalks or the subways
or ride yellow buses home,
altering the form of knowing,
changing heads,
changing hearts,
changing history,
bringing harvest
home.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 