Tag: teaching
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The Gradebook of Small Griefs
We came for chalk and the sound of a question landing,for the slow bloom of a student’s face when a hard thing suddenly makes sense.We came with lesson plans like little ships and optimism folded into our pockets,and somewhere between the photocopier and the meeting room the compass got nicked. The salary letter arrives as…
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Howl For the Quiet Classroom
(With inspiration from, and apologies to, Allen Ginsberg…) I saw the best minds of my generationtrying to get thirty teenagersto care about a metaphorat nine‑thirty on a Tuesday,holy fools of fluorescent corridorsdragging whiteboard pens like relics,summoning meaning from photocopiesthat still smell of warm toner. I walked the tiled floors of the learning cathedral,the budget‑cut basilica,the…
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Poetry is Taught Wrong
They teach us metrics like a checklist,syllables counted like coins, rhythm weighed and filed away.We learn to admire the beast from a glass box: dissected, annotated, politely dead.They hand us diagrams of feeling and expect tidy answers. We are asked to tame metaphors into essays, to translate thunder into bullet points.We paste sticky notes over…
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Salt, Stone, Signal
We wear the weather like a cardigan here;salt on the collar, wind in the seams, Caithness sky stretched like an exam paper you can’t quite fold right.The bus leaves before the light finishes waking; I tuck my keys into the same pocket that remembers first-day nerves.My classroom is a cottage of cushions and careful rules,…