A Poetic Education

The latest in my line of writing projects and one that's been making me think all day long. It's always the short stuff that prompts long-winded posts.

The series thus far is compromised of poems with six lines falling into two stanzas; stanza one is how the narrator should have learned something (i.e. by studying), stanza two is how they actually learned it (i.e. by experiencing). Fairly straightforward.

PaperDart posted a comment that really got me thinking though; about what I was writing, how I was writing it, and, more importantly, why I was writing it. I hadn't intended to imply anything negative about a love of learning, but the poems could be read that way. I've already brought it up in the Artist Comments here, but for summary; after mulling it over, I came to the conclusion that the disconnect I had been writing into the poems had less to do with learning and more to do with educating.

I have had three very good teachers and one truly awful teacher; the rest more or less fell into the spectrum of "bland." I understand that a teacher has a difficult job; I don't envy their profession or the sheer volume of work on their shoulders. But this is important work - this actually matters. They're working with kids eight hours a day. That was more time than I ever spent with my own family in a day.

I don't want to come off as "education MUST be fun or kids won't learn," but there's so little to enjoy in the current education system, or at least the one I went through. Minnick told us a few weeks ago in Drama - kids get an average of about two minutes to talk during the entire day. And then you wonder why they're restless in class?

But the teachers I did have, the good ones, the ones that made it worthwhile, got it - they made things not necessarily fun, but engaging. We wanted to listen. We wanted to hear what they were trying to say, or at least I did. Even if the rest of the day was shot by the other classes, these were worthwhile. I know last semester Adolescent Literature was more or less the only reason I got out of bed some mornings. I suffered through Anthropology, its lab course, and Form and Theory just to get to it. It was my reward for going through all the motions.

I'm getting rather rambly, so I'll cut it short - people deserve to know when they're making a difference. And even though I'm no longer in contact with two of those three teachers, I can make damn sure the third one knows it. And I did :)