Once I was a teacher.
The real thing.
I watched learning happen.
Confusion loosening.
Ideas switching on.
Poetry lived in the room.
Characters appeared.
We argued truth.
Ideas spiralled, settled and joined.
The beauty was in the unknowing.
The beauty was in forming shape.
Once I was a teacher.
Caught in effort.
Conscious of mistakes.
The classroom hardened.
Friction everywhere.
Nerves shrieked through me.
No space to think.
Learning thinned out.
Noise and irritation.
In me. In them.
Meaning didn’t find a home.
Teaching
When learning flows—and when it doesn’t
