A Letter to My Students...

Dear Fill in the blank
On most days
I would fill that in
With my beloved, beloved kids

And on other days
I wanna fill that in with
You lazy fuckers
Sit down!
Be quiet!
Do your work
Stop tagging on my desks
Stop makin fun of my hair
Stop being so apathetic!

But again
On most days
I would fill it in
With my beloved, beloved kids

I wanted to let them know
What they mean to me

Cause all I’ve ever done was
Try to help them realize the truth
That they deserve all the happiness
That this universe can give birth to

And that happiness
Isn’t found in the newest pair of Air Jordans
Or what cool color their ipod is

But in the fact that
All they should ever BE
All they should ever DO
Is pursue happiness

So I try to teach my kids
That the most important thing
In what they want to DO
Or what they want to BE
When they grow up
Is to be happy

And so they ask me
“Mister…
Are you happy…
Do you love your job”
And some days I’m honest
And I tell them
“hell no!”

Then I proceed to tell them
Why that is so
It’s because some days
My soul gets beat down with
So much of their apathy

And their apathy
Has taken me to a place
Where my soul is so lost
Where no matter how much I search for it…
My own happiness may never be found…
Doing this job
In a classroom with them…

Where I question whether or not
This job is truly what I want to do with myself
Because the real reason why I love my job

Is because on most days
I love my kids



And the fact that
It’s so hard for me to check my emotions
At the door that I walk through
Every morning to enter my classroom
I end up wearing my heart
Not only on my sleeve
But across my chest

And when I see
That they are really more concerned
With all the trappings
Of the manufactured values we have
In this capitalistic prison of a world…

My heart begins to crumble

So I want to tell them
Why it is that I love this job
It’s because on most days
They make me feel like
All that I could ever want to DO
All that I could ever want to BE
Is their teacher
And on most days
When I learn as much from them
As they do from me
What more can a person want to feel?

Together we’ve found a little moment of bliss
A moment of perfection
Where the quest for knowledge and wisdom
Reigns over any other desire






So this letter is being written
So that whenever they ask me again
Whether or not I love my job
I want to let them know
That standing in front of them
Watching them wonder
About possibility
About change
About what their life means
And about how there is meaning to life…
About who they are
And what they will become
And about the fact that
Because of them
I have discovered the greatest joy

Then the answer is yes
I do love my job
Not just on most days…
But everyday