People and apples

As well as my artist’s life, here in the studio, here at my desk, I have another job. A “day job”, although on the days I’m working at that job, it always seems to last way beyond the daytime and into the evening… But you know what I mean. I am also a teacher and this is an important part of my life too. I have plenty of opinions about schools and school systems and how things are in the world of education now, but I’m not here to talk about that. It’s not the important bit anyway. What matters, is how important it is and how precious that chance is for us to get to help young people learn, become themselves, find their way in the world, never be frightened to ask questions and to have their own answers. Thinking for themselves. Creating.

So, much as I may have complaints about aspects of the job – and it’s a hard job – I am very grateful and proud to be a teacher.

Part time. 🙂

The best bit by far about the job for me, even better than writing poems together and making art and music together, is getting to know all these amazing kids. Kids are brilliant. As teachers, we only get to know our students for a short time in one another’s lives. Just a stripe in the overall pattern of a life, but some of those stripes are very vivid. Over the years I’ve been teaching, I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids, each one of whom has their own story to tell, each one their own stripe. As I reached another staging point in my career, I wanted to take the time to celebrate some of these individuals, combining both my worlds of work by writing a collection of poems for them. I wrote a hundred “Letters for the Kids”, each one about a different young person I have taught. It was a very emotional project for me, but a beautiful one.

This one poem I’m sharing today, is about a wee boy who came to us with a very complex set of learning needs. He came a long way.

Letter to F  

You used to sit like an apple
That’s what your Mum told us
Stayed where you’d been put,
Saying nothing – the wordless apple
Wrapped in thick silence
Blanketed from the world

But you were not an apple.
You found words and letters and
Drew pictures on the board, smiling as
The other kids applauded you. 
The silence was gone and 
You were an irreplaceable part of their world

There are so many ways to
Be a human.
None of us are apples, 
Least of all
You