Exit Interview: A final poem to my students

For those of you who don't know, I am leaving my position as an English teacher at Oswego High School and pursuing a graduate degree at SIU-Edwardsville. The decision was difficult, but perfect for me and my personal goals. On Thursday, May 22nd, I shared this final poem with my students. The text speaks for itself, but I would like to thank everyone who had a hand in my teaching career. Whether you were a student or colleague, administrator or mentor, thank you for everything. I could not have asked for a better five years (DGS and OHS included).

Cheers to taking leaps. I love you for reading.

Exit Interview

I won’t conduct an exit interview

before I leave this place for good,

but if I did, it would likely entail questions

about my experience, reflections

on growth and grades and the ways

of this district.

I doubt they’d ask about my students,

those young minds consuming the thought cloud

resting above my right shoulder,

a final image for the reader to capture before this story ends.

Suppose the process was all procedure,

a  printout of questions from district headquarters.

I’d stop them and say this:

I hope, during my time here

I encouraged one student to toe the cliffs of his limits,

to leap into thin air because it felt right and not because

the world expected him to.

I hope a student’s bad day was made, just once,

from a silly note or poem I wrote, the words glistening

in their inky glory, the only light such a kid would see that day.

I hope they learned the power of language,

the way words can team up into a violent army,

burn holes through the soul of another with an easy flick of a trigger,

but how words, those same words, can just as easily

drop their weapons, hold up their hands in peace

and build something no army can destroy.

I hope my students learned to love a book,

or stories, the realest expressions of people;

I hope one of them, at least one, grew angry

at a man that didn't exist anywhere but on a page.

I hope the word “poetry” will not make them shudder,

but smile, and when others chastise the art they defend it

like their little brother on a playground being taunted by bullies,

explain how beautiful it is,

how each piece of it was selected carefully by its creator,

arranged in such a way that someone may see it

and love it for who it is, for what it reveals on the surface

and what lies beneath—the good stuff, that which is only found when

one invests thought and care into the poem.

And I hope, for at least some of my students,

I will be that poem, the one they turn to

because they know what they’ll get,

a message that understands them.

I hope they grin each time they flip to me,

read me, or even think of me—how I may be resting

on some bookshelf in the dark,

believing in them,

waiting, smiling,

old and distant,

But always there.