students as story

the prequel and sequel to now

consider the kids in a school as a story, a book,

and we live a chapter with them,

for that story to be, prequel after prequel have been lived,

each is not an Athena who has sprung forth full-blown,

with no past,

a teacher reads the story,

and, if we read it well,

we know the character before us

and our understanding touches the pieces of the plot that is now,

and we enter the story as a new character, probably minor,

in the story the student is telling with his and her life,

and that chapter can be engaging with conflict--challenge,

and we hope with success,

the student moves on into the sequel,

a chapter is over, and yet the story continues,

before our chapter, if we look back, were other chapters

in which the characters faced other challenges

and created their personas through how they learned the world to be,

and how they could be in relationship to themselves,

to others, and to other challenges,

character develops, and the backstory can be vital 

to understanding the character and plot before us,

I want to teach the whole child,

in all the glory and effort, 

the hope and the doubt,

that now manifests,

I also love to know and appreciate the texture of the past

which lives with them in who they are,

and I do like to imagine the future that calls to them

as the whole person can seek to break through 

shell after shell which might hold them back.

by Henry H. Walker

February 2, ’13