Yesterday my wife, a 1st grade teacher, came home exhausted and a bit emotionally overwhelmed. It was her first day of school and her first day as a head teacher. Half way through the day a new child was brought into her classroom. The new child was both hysterical and fundamentally lacking english language skills. While she has been working for 4.5 years in a variety of unique situations this event caught her off guard.
Having just got off the phone with her and hearing her confidence in how the day went, I am thankful for the collaborative environment in which she is teaching and for her own ability to call on her own deep reservoir of teaching skill. It seems that dealing with the unexpected and with characteristics and situations that lie well outside your control is the domain of the teacher.

Perhaps that’s why when I read this at NYC Educator (check out this blog for a unvarnished look into NYC public school teaching) it immediately caught my attention. The poem is entitled:

Tikkun Olam

by Abigail E. Meyers

  Our task begins

with giving order to the chaos created

by poverty, illiteracy, apathy,

the too-cool kids that make bad parents

or good parents with a too-cool world

to fight, exhausted by the battle

with neighbors, government, money,

broken glass, broken hearts, broken homes, broken lives—
this is where we begin.

We step in,

dressed more sharply than we’d like,

speaking more sharply than we’d like,

issuing rules and goals,

shaking our heads, straightening lines,

bleeding our wallets and minds

right from the start

to stanch the flow from our hearts

as long as we can

before this newest collection

of dreamers, criminals, fighters, angels—

children, all—works their way in
before we can begin

to bring them to order

and teach them to teach themselves,

restore them to the restoration

of the universe, raise up a million saviors,

prop them up with stickers and pencils,

form them into wobbly queues, love them, love them.

by Tyler, CEO