after Walt Whitman

When I heard the learned administrator speak
in his omniscient in-service day voice to rows
of teachers, I recalled that he himself had not
taught a class in 30 years. And, as he covered
the screen with power point test score
numbers and chided us about ours being lower
than the next town’s, he said this would be
in the papers and he dreaded the phone calls
from parents. After he ordered more work sheets,
drills, and test prep lessons aimed at the SAT
and ACT, this Ph.D. said the governor wanted
new state tests and what was he supposed to do
if that next town scored higher than we did?
When he, with a face red as his new Mercedes,
shouted about teachers’ salaries being so high
with these numbers so low, when he asked
why in God’s name were we teaching
if not to raise standardized tests scores,
I walked out past the coffee and doughnuts
into the perfect silence of the English wing.
I stood yearning for my unstatistical joy
when a weeping mother called to tell me
in her son’s room next to Ozzie Osbourne
CD’s, tins of chewing tobacco, and
under a Guns and Ammo magazine,
she found a poem he’d written in my class
titled, "Someone I Love" and
he had dedicated it to her.


From Dream Teaching (Grayson Books).
Used with the author’s permission.