April brings out inner poet

It’s late Sunday night, I am beautifully exhausted from a weekend of running errands, playing with my kids, wondering, finding elephants in the clouds, baking cupcakes, quelling fears and splashing through slush.

It’s National Poetry Month and its April. One is a favorite; the other a least favorite. This is the month when the doubts start to creep in and the bite of curricular expectation starts to hurt. Progression is scrutinized and time is planned out — to the very day, hour, minute and moment.

On this blissful Sunday night, because it’s April and because it’s National Poetry Month — but most of all because the ticking of the keys on my keyboard and the ticking of the clock in my head — I conspire to speak to my literary soul. I find myself needing to write. I don’t want to write a letter or a dissertation on how my students teach me snippets about life’s little lessons each day. I don’t want to write a feel-good saga with Hilary Swank as the heroine or a soapbox-laden article on the rising power of girl bullies. No, I want to write a poem about what it feels like to be a teacher, in April.

On Sunday afternoons in April I feel a trickle of dread

As some teachers do

And wait for peace to find me

Like that one child who is always late, but who you are glad to have there

Because at least he showed up.

Like a Plumber plumbs and an Electrician electrifies

A teacher teaches.

We are experts in the field of offering wonder

We know where the rabbit hole leads

Because we’ve been there.

But some of us are also worriers with one eye on the calendar

Fretting that the hours of planning and prep

The conferring and correcting

Haven’t seeped in

And instead of leaving us ready to grow, you are just leaving.

We knew what you needed when you came through our doors

we sensed your commonalities

we trusted in your differences

We gave you what we knew you needed

Before you asked for it.

But it’s April now

And you are nearly finished with the chapter

You are nearly done with the essay

And you have conquered the rule book

But have you learned?

Have you understood what we meant to say?

Do you understand that the questions themselves are the answers,

and that having an education is the miracle

We are just the workers, but we are the teachers

And that’s what we do.

Vanessa Powell is a National Board Certified fifth-grade teacher at Snowshoe Elementary in Wasilla.