If You Want to Be a Teacher...

Tomorrow is "Poem In Your Pocket" Day at our school! This is the poem I am putting in my pocket.  It is an excerpt from Random Thoughts: The Humanity of Teaching by Louis Schmier.  My favorite lines:
"If you want to be a teacher, you have to be inspired and inspire."
"If you want to be a teacher, you have to fall in love each day."

If You Want to Be a Teacher

By Louis Schmier

If you want to be a teacher, you first have to learn how to play hopscotch

And hide-and-seek,

Learn how to watch a snail crawl, blow bubbles,

Read Yertle the Turtle.

If you want to be a teacher, listen to a distant train,

Wiggle your toes in the mud and let it ooze through them,

Stomp in rain puddles,

And be humbled by the majesty of a mountain.

If you want to be a teacher, you have to be inspired and inspire.

If you want to be a teacher, you have to bring joy into everything,

Watch in awe a sunset or sunrise,

Ride on a swing,

And respect even a cockroach as a miracle of life.

If you want to be a teacher, you have to think silly thoughts,

Swirl a Tootsie Pop in your mouth.

If you want to be a teacher, you have to fall in love each day.

If you want to be a teacher, you have to put aside your formal theories,

Intellectual constructs, axioms, statistics, and charts,

When you reach out to touch that miracle called

The individual human being.