Innocence

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
('You Begin' by Margaret Atwood)

I had two difficult classes to teach today. The first comprised a three- or four-year-old so lost in her own world that she only noticed my presence every few minutes, when she wasn't calling for her mother or playing with her fingers and coat. I was deeply frustrated, of course, but there is also a beauty in the way she laughs inexplicably at the littlest things — like the heart shape formed by her thumbs and index fingers, or a down feather from her coat floating in the air — the way only a child does.

The other was my eighth and final class with a rowdy group of 15 11–12-year-olds. I've always described this class as a living nightmare: they run around the classroom, refuse to return to their seats, refuse to do their work and are rude and disrespectful. Not all of them, but that's precisely what bothers me — that some of them do want to learn and can't because every couple of minutes I have to tell someone to sit down or stop horseplay.

Feeling rather dejected and contemplative, I wondered after the class whether I could have done better and whether any of them actually learnt anything. I realised that, despite their slightly more grown-up antics, they are not so different from the younger student: ensconced in their own safe worlds, not realising that when they step out they might need to use or recall some of the things I tried to teach to them.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

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