We Got Somewhere.

On Friday, I typed out a huge, long, ranty, negative post about how depressing the day was. It was lunch time, and I was eating my Amy's organic spinach lasagna alone in my room because sometimes I just need peace and quiet and time to decompress. So I ranted in a blog post and then had the sense to hit "Save" instead of "Publish."

But then after lunch, my kids came back. They're seniors, but the ones who will struggle to make it through community college, just because of life circumstances and choices. They're the ones who tell each other to "shut the hell up" even when I tell them not to, so I have to rescript them. The ones who are already having babies and working part time to help their families pay bills. The ones who sometimes don't have anything to eat, so I always keep granola bars in my classroom so they can have a snack throughout the day.

They're also the ones who HATE POETRY. We've been trying to scan iambic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter and anapestic trimeter for a couple weeks now. We've been trying to ANALYZE figurative language, not just identify it. We've been trying to differentiate between exact, slant, and eye rhyme.

They just don't get it. It's tough for them. And they don't see how it's relevant to their lives because, well, frankly, it's not. They tell me that poetry "sucks" and is "stupid," and I commend them on their skillful alliteration.
But poetry can be so ENRICHING that I just feel compelled to expose it to them so a poem can breathe life into them, so it can hold their hands and lead them to exotic and breathtaking places, so it can punch them in the gut so they can't breathe.

Well, Friday, we had a little breakthrough. We read the following sonnet:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

And at the end, one of my students goes, "That was really beautiful."

I didn't want her to see that I had tears in my eyes. She gave me a glimmer of hope on a day when I felt like I am making zero difference in these kids' lives. Yes, I love teaching, but it's so depressing sometimes. Sometimes it feels like I'm a bumper car, stuck in a corner, ramming myself against walls and other cars to try and get somewhere, but staying in the same place.

But Friday, we got somewhere. Praise the Lord, hallelujah, we got somewhere.