Genre Reflection #1

You just don’t feel like it?

 

Let me tell you something.

This building with the gym and the lockers and the dim lighting in the hallways
And the fluorescent, blinding classroom bulbs
And the adult-sized humans with the child-like faces,
Squinting and yawning with their backpacks hanging low,
Tugging hunched shoulders into an embarrassing upright position
This place with the square rooms, decorated with calendars, and clichés,
And kitty cats who hang on, and never give up
This place is called school
And you’re here to learn, and work, and grow.
Pick up your pencil and write. Something. Anything.  
An opinion. A fact. A memory. A dream.
And when you do
School will be a different scene.
You will see doors open before your eyes
Action rising and racing and falling
Windows to peek through to other worlds
People to brace you during a brain storm
You’ll see the little girl before you
Not so little anymore
Who used to put her pencil away before a line was written
And stare at pages with words, unrecognizable and meaningless
Until a teacher taught her the secret
Of unwrapping a word like a gift
And lifting it off the page into her own curious, whirling brain

Now, I can teach you all about the secret world
Of knowledge and imagination
Of discovery and joy
Of open doors and limitless options

But first you have to pick up your pencil

And try.

In my imagination

I said all of those things
But I was a student teacher,
and it was my first day,
so I just said…
O.K.