Perhaps it was the hurricane, school being closed, the articles I read this morning, and the full moon. I was inspired to write this poem.

The Teachers

We’re in this together.

We don’t raise bars. We raise children.

 

Bars are metalic and mark rigid end points;

Here is where I stopped learning about multiplication.

Here is where I mastered “response to literature” and ceased reading.

 

We’re in this together.

We don’t raise bars. We raise children.

 

Our value can be measured years later in every love affair started over a good book,

every conversation about why the coffee spoon bends

or what the rocks have seen in their time on Earth.

 

Try to fill your pail with us—

and see us jump overboard in multitudes;

some with splashes, some

evaporating silently,

finding new harbors, and the light of new fires.

 

We are the teachers.

We’ve always known more of you

than you’ve known of us.

 

We can always do better. In this world

Or the next.

 

~Ariel Sacks

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Author

Ariel Sacks

Ariel Sacks began her 13-year teaching career in New York City public schools after earning her master’s degree at Bank Street College and has taught and coached in grades 7-9. She is the author of Whole Novels for the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach (Jossey-Bass, 2014) and writes a teaching column for Education Week Teacher.

Ariel’s work as a teacher leader with the Center for Teaching Quality involved her in co-authoring Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools – Now and in the Future. She was also featured in the CTQ book Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead Without Leaving.

She is currently working on a book about the role of creative writing in equitable, 21st century schools, and she speaks and leads workshops on the whole novels approach.

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