It's June and the school year's ending.
I'm standing at the classroom door
saying farewell to thirty students
I'll likely see no more.
I smile and wish them well, pretending
to be happy when I'm not.
A teacher fails if all don't pass.
Dan walks by me without a word--
the only sophomore I flunked.
My whispered "Sorry," goes unheard.
The grade book shows his oft-failed tests
and too much homework not turned in.
It doesn't reveal my lackings though.
A teacher fails if all don't pass.
That failure nags at me all summer long.
It makes me ponder, reassess
my actions, methods, lesson plans.
Repeatedly I ask myself,
"What didn't I do? Where'd I go wrong?
Is the fault my style . . . or is it me?
A teacher fails if all don't pass.
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Failure
Contest Winner
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Author Notes
Artwork is courtesy of Google images.
This may surprise many of you, but most teachers I knew and worked with felt a great sense of failure if any of their students did not pass or were not promoted.
My mentor, who was a terrific teacher, told me this repeatedly: You cannot reach every student.
But I tried, and when one flunked, I truly felt it was my fault. This poem hopefully illustrates what I mean.
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