Not just anyone can teach

An open poem to the Wyoming Legislature

Dear Wyoming Legislature,  

I’d like to address one of your many bills you are proposing that seemingly are being drafted to gut education here in our Wild West state.  While there are quite a few drops of poison you are attempting to add to our educational well here - this one in particular has a bit more of a surreally stupidity that can’t go ignored.  

Yikes - right? I can’t believe I have to write this but apparently desperate politicians call for desperate poems. 

Here’s something should you already know:

     

not just anyone can teach.   



A teacher isn’t just a warm body

filling an empty chair.



Teachers are the ones who have spent their lives

carefully turning their hearts into lighthouses—

a steady, unyielding glow that cuts through the storm

and guides the lost safely home.



How can you not see it that a lighthouse without a keeper 

will become nothing more than a dark tower 

- a lumbering monument to how we failed our children


Politics have turned the once lush gardens 

of our classrooms into scorched earth war trenches.


Where there once were seeds of curiosity,

now there are battle lines.  

We ask teachers to grow flowers

in soil packed with landmines,


        to shield their students from the crossfire

from decisions made by people behind 

microphones who are more concerned about

their polling numbers than the people they were

somehow elected to serve.  


We have been investing in tanks over textbooks for years,

and now that the bill has come due: 


we look to cut corners,

bargain away the future,

just to pay for the platform

of unsteady ground.


to those who hold the keys to tomorrow:


what kind of foundation are you building

when you trade expertise for convenience?

do you think a child can’t tell

the difference between a guide

and someone fumbling with a map?

you can save a dollar today,

but it will cost us a generation tomorrow.



A teacher should never be an empty suit

with a paycheck in one hand

and a how-to manual in the other.


They are the ones who know

~ how to lead children into the wilds of growing up,

~ how to spot the wolves before they circle too close,

~ how to howl back with strength and certainty

so the camp remains safe.  


Being a teacher isn’t just a job.

                 It’s a calling, a vocation.


You wouldn’t take volunteers from a passenger list

to fly a plane through a storm—

so why would we gamble with the minds

and future of our children?


If you want the best to teach,

treat them like the heroes they are.



Stop making them juggle second jobs

just to keep the lights on.


Stop questioning their hearts.


Stop forcing them to build a classroom

out of their own wallets.



Because if we treat teaching

like it’s nothing more than a seat to be filled,


we won’t get steady hands or guiding voices—

we’ll get faint echoes,

too quiet to scare off the wolves,

too dim to show the way through the dark.


A teacher’s heart is a blazing 

and we need every beam of light we can get

to help us find our way back home.

Photo by Akara Yoth Tat on Unsplash