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What Great Change
Revised version:
I meet them in the street, park, or
shopping centre with their child,
on their own, smiling, sardonic,
sour or scorn thinly veiled or open

and true. Did I instil, inspire,
draw flame passionate, in the room
of chalk and duster, white board,
tablet, computer and cassette?

What new world has been created
in charity, justice, tolerance
integrity due to any seed
I might have sown?


What Great Change
And what great change did
I instil, inspire, intuit; idea
draw flame passionate, possessed
in the room of chalk and duster
white board, tablet, computer

and cassette? I meet them on
the street, park, or shopping centre
with their child, on their own,
smiling, sardonic, sour or scorn
thinly veiled or open and true;

what new world has been created
in charity, justice, tolerance
integrity due to any seed
I might have sown?

Enjoyed this, Jimmy. Padraic Colum answered a similar question in his poem "A Poor Scholar of the Forties" :

"But what avail my teaching slight?
Years hence, in rustic speech, a phrase,
As in wild earth a Grecian vase!"

So, not all in vain, perhaps?

As a child of two parents who were teachers, I love this and I know they would have loved it, too.

Students returned to personally thank my Dad for his pedantic insistence on good handwriting, as he stressed that if no one can read what you've written, you might as well not have written it. That, of course, has changed with today's electronic world. Now, children are rare who can do math on their own without a calculator. Students also urged him to write a textbook with the many ways he found to explain things that allowed them to finally 'get it' ~ and they included tips they could use to remember how to address the issues later. With my Mom, people often thanked her for her caring and confidentiality when she took time out for them and didn't ridicule or embarrass them when they trouble 'getting' things.

I'm very sure that you have done great good in the classroom, too .

Thanks for that Athnuachan (trying to figure out the derivation of your Irish avatar). Didn't realise Colum had writen on a similar theme.

Thanks Liz for your responses. Sometimes I wonder what will all the education (and 'good' education) received by so many good teachers our society still manages to find itself in so much a mess. I think that was my initial inspiration for writing this poem. The narrator's 'I' could also be 'we'...

I guess you can only sow the seeds and hope for the best. It was interesting that you mentioned all of the changing technologies (tools) used to teach, it really is a different world, yet what you hope to impart "charity, justice, tolerance/integrity" have remained a constant.

Good insight Cate... wanted to take into acount the changes that have taken place in teaching even within so short a time, yet the old values/virtues are timeless....

Brilliant. It reminds me what I owe to my teachers. I think I'm unusual in that my experience of school from beginning to end was positive and I was blessed with some dedicated an very human teachers.

Thanks Jonnie...
good to hear positive reviews about teachers.
I know that for many people their school experience has been pretty positive. I suppose my poem is lamenting the fact that all too often the idealism 'taught or 'caught' wears off all to easily...

I have re-worked this poem... hope it scours better!!

I didn't take it, as the other commenters did, as a poem about teachers. I understood it from the perspective of a student among other students, classmates; pretty interesting. The idea is the same--the big question, thought--you offer. It's been said thousands of ways in poems and narrative, but I thought you said it well. Fresh, from your experience, and it made me look at mine, in that environment. It evokes a universal quality.

Your use of alliteration, I really enjoyed. It worked well. I haven't read the re-worked version yet, but I was wondering if and how a similar alliteration in the final stanza would have turned out?

Thanks. ...really nice.

Marcia

ps--I really like your Don Quixote illustration. Charming.