Poem about teachers' first days

I have been teaching a very long time. I know what I know and I know that I can teach very well. And yet, every year when school starts I have anxiety attacks out of fear that I have "lost it" as a teacher. Our MS principal addressed this in a really fine poem that could only come out of the thoughts of an excellent teacher. I am posting this and hope that all of your in the trenches might take comfort and hope from this. Teaching is the one of the best professions if the public supports you and the parents with work with you. Otherwise................... Best wishes to my fellow teachers.

The First Day of School


Richard A. Lawson

and what are the important questions anyway?
oh this first day of school after a night of no sleep wondering even fearing how this day will go and all the rest hoping it unfolds neatly as lesson plans promise probably not and in that thought works a hint of unreadiness and a quiet panic that hovers through the black coffee yet later when we gather in first morning expectancy we do manage to breathe though not deeply

my years are useless I am as new here

when the bell rings as all of those now looking at me

but what is this day and all the rest about not of course rules and study habits or even a bag full of knowledge somehow packed in all those books tidy on each desk rather an urge to know that pushes us into wondering about clouds becoming raindrops from another side of the world or why the flower outside the window blooms at this precise moment where the songs in my heart come from and where are they going all those questions not in my curriculum guide but that I now see in a new girl who can’t stay in her seat and dances an interruption around the room negotiates attention in mid sentence and at the end of my wits tells me a story during lunch that is dazzling and profound and in one brief moment I see her soul in love with imagination that must move and wave and try to fly and this is what I must realm on this first day
that in our remembered self is an urge to create I can look for it or not but my choice had better be made with love and reverence for what we all want to express our unique genius no matter what because that is who we are and after all the only question worth considering anyway no wonder the night is full of sleeplessness

this is a question of life nothing else comes close I remember now why I’m here and frightened and so in awe of this moment and these children