Relax

A little poem I wrote for a class that I thought I'd share.  It's about my fears of students teaching.. but in the end theres light.  (The beats and structure is derived from a poem by Ellen Bass also called Relax)

Relax
Bad things are going to happen.
My master teacher will hate me
and tell me I’m not qualified to be in their classroom.
A student will come to me with goo all over their hands
dripping all over themselves,
me, and the brand new carpet in the brand new building that I promised to keep neat.
My car will run out of gas
on the way to my first day,
less than one mile away from the parking lot.
I will spend all waking and sleeping hours on my TPAs
to make them exceptionally perfect, and I
still won’t receive my credential. Another student –
the one you never really liked – will come to class
sick as a dog
right after I got over a flu virus and cough all over me.
I’ll break a heel.
No matter how much I observe my master teacher,
how many notes I take, I’ll forget it all,
and my mind will go blank. My mom
will start asking me to pay rent
even though I’m jobless, as she knows,
and once I figure out how to come up with the money
I’ll come home to my dad watching Big Brother
on a huge flat screen TV my rent money has paid for.
There’s a poem written by Ellen Bass.
She comes across the most awful situations
no one would want to encounter. But it’s also reality.
Seems so unfathomable, but anything can happen.
I see a light at the end of the tunnel,
I walk towards it, slowly at first.
Then at a swift meaningful jog because I know I’ll see the other side.
So here’s how my student teaching will play out,
a student will hate me, I’ll trip and fall –
stumble on a skateboard a student uses as transportation
and my dress will go over my head.
The experience will be unforgettable and meaningful as
the days will go by and hopefully my master teacher
won’t hate me after all.