The Classroom
[Under construction: 1 June 2005]
I wrote this poem in the early- to mid-1980s. I love the processes of learning and teaching, but found the experience of teaching in schools extremely alienating. As a result of my three years in comprehensive schools, I thought that I was incapable of teaching. I guess that I was a different person then, and I have learned much since, about teaching, about groups and groupwork, about young people, and about myself.
A starkly cold volume of time and hardness
Is broken by glass. Polished wooden
Tables, reflecting the ghosts and echoes
Of pupils, stand naked. Abandoned
By children who, sticking gum beneath tables,
Saw lessons I strutted against them.
A blackboard is scattered with half-obscured answers
To various homeworks. The window
Looks onto a playground of walls and railings;
Bright litter more catchy than flowers.
Nowhere the joy of volume and echoes.
A meaning stands empty, abandoned.
