Lessons of Another Kind
© Leslie Owen Wilson
I came to teach,
To see what I could find
Inside my students’ deeper selves.
I came to try and open minds
Before they were seamed shut.
I came to channel passages,
Hoping to connect hearts to heads
And hands.
I came to entreat,
To coax ennobled thoughts,
Ideals, and love of self and others.
I thought that this must come from inside out
Into the essence of their beings,
Into relationships,
As connections to words and deeds,
And pedagogic styles.
I came to probe,
And sometimes poke,
To make them think,
And laugh
At small and narrowed views.
For I wanted them to see,
With their own eyes,
Beyond the limitations of closed perceptions
Into the beauty and the pain of others’ views.
I came to teach,
But learned instead
That they had just as much
To say to me.
Their lessons were often raw,
Sometimes unformed and yet complex.
I came to give and yet was given.
For through their gifts I saw anew
That I must learn to guard against complacency, conclusions,
And the allure of too soon ends.
I came to grow,
Unknowingly
To shed my false, new scholar’s skin
And metamorphose
Into to something new
And strange –
Something far beyond the shadows of my old instructive self.
I came to teach but was changed in other ways,
And now remember that life is still a two way street.
These were lessons
I needed to commit to memory, again.
Perhaps it is enough to say, I came to teach but learned instead.
Just as much as they learn from us, every day we learn so much from our students as well!
Have a wonderful finish to the school year!
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