DaveKemper.net

school was pretty much senseless
for someone like you
who was so much a part of the world
already by the age of 13 or 14

as a member of a farming family
you were knee-deep in  life
learning about cropping and coupling
everyday 
doing work that really mattered
everyday

the same certainly can’t be said
for the assignments in my classroom

I’m sure, for instance,
that writing  practice paragraphs
stimulated you no end 

what would life be like, after all, 
without knowing how to write
pointless little bits of prose

for a time
you and one of your town friends
ate your lunch in my classroom
and shared stories about home life

I became TEACHER only when
the language became too real
——————————————
Doug,
you were who you were,
a young man with a beat-that attitude
born of work and responsibility

I may have had 10 years
on you by the calendar
but in terms of life experiences
you were more than my equal  

you thought of me as a crack up   didn’t you
talking out of turn   joking around in class
all play   no work
“Hey, Mr. Kemper, why do you wear that cookie duster?”

remember the times you sent me out of class
or the time you made me stand in the corner
with gum on my nose
oh yeah    good times

and what about the time
you saw me out in the hall    crying

what did that make you think
that I had been hit or hurt
made to feel foolish

or that I was scared to go to my next class
or scared to get on the bus
or scared to go home
or sick of feeling left out

or maybe you thought
I was just having one of those days

it would have been nice    maybe
for you to have found out why I was upset
you being a teacher and all
but that didn’t happen

oh yeah   good times in middle school

you seemed so distant and dusty
like one of those sullen, unkempt boys
in tarnished photographs of prairie schoolchildren

true to form, I kept my distance
having no idea what to make of you
I don’t think anyone did

I can’t remember any of your classmates
purposefully acknowledging your presence
it was as if you weren’t really there–
a phantom, apparition, specter, shade

rumor had it that in part of your house
there were dirt floors
that would have been only fitting

on those occasions when you did show up
any work that you did was nearly unintelligible
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

how would your story have played out
if you had attended a rural school
a century past
learning your numbers and letters
with a few farm kids

you would have struggled there too
but, at the very least, your classmates
coming from the same difficult soil
would have better understood you

and what would it have mattered anyway
either your father or some other farmer
would have had plenty of work for you
work that required a strong back
more than it required reading and writing

you dressed like  Fred MacMurray
complete with cardigan sweaters and pressed pants
in a school in which T-shirts
and blue jeans were haute couture

the piano solo you performed
at an all-school assembly
demonstrated an expertise
that went way beyond
what the other kids were doing

it’s too bad home schooling
or Christian schooling
weren’t options for you
considering your religious
upbringing and all

our school obviously lacked
the faith-based ballast
to steady your way

that is, if the discomfort 
you felt in my classroom–
what am I doing here?– 
carried over to your other classes

without the devotional guidance
that stablized (or at least influenced)
you life on the outside
you were clearly sailing in troubled water

what if I had said
to celebrate romance
will be our next unit of study

to luxuriate in love stories and love poems
“love in a stronger season than reason,
my sweet one, and April is where we are”
to learn about courtship, share crushes

to sing about perfect partners, write romances
let passion drip over everything

that would have caught your attention
at least for awhile

I’m semi-serious about this
because it seemed to me that you
like a lot of your friends
were into RELATIONSHIPS

you had discovered boys
and nothing else mattered much
cetainly not the day to day
tedium of transposing sentences or
reciting irregular verbs

and it  might help explain why you came
into class one day with my wedding ring
that I had lost in the auditorium
displayed for all to see on a chain
draped around your neck

just a prop I suppose
in your current passion play
but a bit cheeky nonetheless
wouldn’t you say

every classroom has good students
who complete all of their assignments,
following directions to a tee

oh, how they want to DO THINGS RIGHT
that means more to them than anything else
extra credit sends them into ecstasy:
“Now I can do more things right!”

these are the good little Egyptians
with rows of gold stars after their names

there is another type of good student
who occasionally graces a classroom,
an individual who’s intent on being
thoughtfully engaged in the course work

not to gain brownie points
but actually to learn something

Devin, you were one of these students–
calm, pleasant, and curious–
ready to analyze and discuss meaty texts

after reading a de Montaigne essay,
you asked me if we could (gasp!)
read more of his work in class, and if not,
could I suggest some titles for independent reading . . .

your “blood was up”; you were ready for more
and, dear friends, it was a glorious thing to behold
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

de Montaigne once said, “The great thing
in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

I would say that Devin came closer
to belonging to himself than just about
any middle school student I knew

I appreciate him so much more now
than I did at the time

unfortunately, he was intellectually
on his own in my classroom,
but he made the most of the situation

finding ways to “govern himself”
(oh, for the Internet back then)
because be couldn’t govern
what was going on around him

you introduced yourself with this:
“Will we do a lot of debating in this class?
I love debating.”

that request has stuck with me
like the odor that clings to a smoker’s clothes–
sour and deep

you seemed sincere at the time
(a 7th grader interested in debate? why not?)
though you may have been testing me, the new teacher

I can’t remember what immediate response I gave
probably a nod or a condescending “We’ll see”

unfortunately for you
I had no experience with debate
and no training in rhetoric and logic
(I don’t actually know what I had training in)

so there were no debates in my classroom
even lively discussions were hard to come by

I don’t remember much else about you that year
other than you showed little interest in my class

*********************************************
what happened to you is what happened
to many of my students–
you were sucked into the black hole of busy work
and seldom encouraged to think for yourself
seldom “excited into self activity”

but what if I had taken you up on your request
and what if I had made you think

would that have been the start
of Joel Meader, the lively skeptic,
Joel Meader, curious and confident
citizen of the world?

I’ll never know (more…)

you were the strong and silent type
excelling in the classroom
and staying clear of the popularity traps

you signed up for wrestling,
the most demanding sport
the school had to offer

and night after wintery night
you and a few other sturdy boys
worked out on an old stage, head to head,
testing your strength and your pluck

during your freshmen year
you were named  captain of the football team
and class president as well

after that I lost track of you until later
when I heard that you had left school
to get married and become a father

***************************************
I only knew you for one quick year
when you were just becoming a young man
so I have no way of really knowing
how your story plays out

but I admired how you worked
your way through eighth grade

just as  I admired the determination
of the  Kentucky farm boy we read about
in the Jesse Stuart stories–    
  
   who shouldered a shitload of chores
   walked a long path to school
   and performed beyond grade level

and I want to believe, and will believe,
that you went about your new life
in much the same way       

Reni,
because of your emerging womanhood
you must have felt no end
of daily discomfort and embarrassment

how degrading it must have felt
to be sitting next to pint-sized boys
who, in terms of maturity,
were still chasing each other at noon break

and how demoralizing it must have felt
to watch girls building friendships
and feeling wanted

yet I could always count on your metal-heavy
smile (naturally, you had to have braces)
before class and your eager responses
during daily lessons

and I can still picture you wearing
large white T-shirts and jeans–
an appropriate outfit for someone
trying to cover up and to fit in

****************************************
dear girl,
you belonged within the warmth of home
alongside your parents and extended family
free from hurtful school experiences

you could have studied there
and, at some point, worked too
perhaps clerking in a local store
taking the time to listen to lonely customers

in such familiar circumstances
you could have grown into adulthood
in a more humane way

you were our angelfish,
eye-catching in every way

add in your popularity,
granted to you as if it were a birthright,
and you must have been the envy
of every girl in the school

you earned A’s and B’s on the busy work
I assigned, but truth be told,
it would have been hard for me
to give someone like you lower grades
(perfection is perfection)

upon graduation, your plans included
attending tech school to study accounting

a disheartening decision, to say the least,
for a vital young girl such as yourself–
to issue deadening financial forecasts
from some corporate neon cubicle

*************************************************
Hannah, at age 13 or 14,
neither you nor your classmates,
should have been thinking
about tech schools or careers

nor  should  you have been
completing the thoughtless work
that I assigned

I should have provided you
with a more stimulating classroom–  
     one that introduced you to good literature,
     engaged you in thoughtful conversations,
     and gave  you time and space to reflect

as it was, I tried to do all of the thinking for the class,
which meant  little, if anything, 
meaningful was ever accomplished