Breathe By Molly Weber
You’re going to forget student names.
Your students will glare and grumble
then promptly call you “Miss” again.
Someone will break the copy machine
when you are ten copies short and the printer
has no ink what-so-ever.
Your car will decide to break down
at the same time as your significant other’s
and you are due at school. Or your dog
will contract a fear of kenneling
and a passion for the cat’s food. The other dog –
the one you love the most – needs dental care
you can afford and is going blind slowly, his eyes
clouding more each day.
You KPTP will come due.
No matter how much you plain,
how well you designed your perfect lesson,
and the amount of reading you consume, you
will mess up a lesson plan. If your students
ignore you and digitalize their entire life
by the whims of Twitter,
you’ll go to an interview and realize you forgot
everything you ever knew about standards
philosophy and methods
– educational vocab,
There’s an old story of a rabbit scared of a wolf.
He stays in his burrow under a tree, he pokes
his head out to eat clover, but ever vigilante
and never far, and his clover grows scarce.
The patient, wise wolf waits and bides his time.
A storm comes and lightning rips and burns the tree
the rabbits home is exposed and he freezes
in fear. The rabbit fed the wolf that night.
So here’s my take, be afraid and be anxious
but do. Act. Be the patient and wise predator
as well as the scared prey.
Taste success in making this far in school
getting your placement and students
enjoy the wild ride.
It’s almost over.
