A Note to the Ed Heads

Since adopting "Sacred Writing Time" in my classroom from Corbett Harrison, I have found a revival in my own writing life. This is what came out...


I wake up these halls,
crack sleeping doors
and make the eyelids of rooms part.
You may know silence, as the absence of TV,
but I know rooms before they fill with 30 young voices.
Do you rise early enough to put to bed the stars?
What do you do in the fading darkness of night's last adventure?
We teachers are like pack mules,
climbing flights of stairs,
strown over our shoulders are the creative inklings,
the squeezed sponges from the brains of future leaders, doctors, and mothers.
Do you know of the battles I must...we must face in a once turn of the earth?
"You teachers have it so easy... the whole summer is one big vacation."
Oh fools, do you carry home any work, do you take classes in the summer, 
or have to plan your work on the weekend?
You can checkout from your job and little hangs in the balance.
Why does our world create this puzzled opinion of the teacher?
You trust us with a most precious investment,
and then look for a thousand ways to pull out the rug.
The pushers of policy preach regulate and evaluate.
Yes! Make it harder to just collect a paycheck.
Yes! Force us to be creative and re-invent ourselves with innovation.
Yes! Ask us to be accountable.
Yet, what you most desire is to squeeze us.
Oh you love to force us in boxes and pin prick us to make each child fit a mold.
Make progress each year.... sure?
Cap off with a full hand of "the proficient".... quite impossible.
Call it a whine or a gripe,
but you are killing the American teacher.
Be shocked when there are few left who can stand under your pressure.
Who then will wake these halls and chase away the night?

** Looking back on this poem from last year.... It seems the heat has been turned up even more. There is so much talk with administration about data and student performance effecting evaluations. This is gonna get interesting.**