So You Want To Be A Teacher?
A poem speaking to some things inherent in great teachers.
This remix is in memory of Charles Bukowski. 1920 – 1994. — We miss you.
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
tablet
looking for a lesson plan,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
to save the world,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
worry about tomorrow’s lesson
again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to teach like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for the lesson to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to check first with your colleagues
or your girlfriend or your principal
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many teachers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves teachers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with
self-love.
the classrooms of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless the lesson comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless not being a teacher would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the ideas inside you are
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
teaching will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.
don’t try,
it’s the trying that gets in the way.
start,
teach.
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