The Tragedy of Weak Teachers

I wrote my first poem at the age of 14. I remember the poem. It was written for an eighth grade English class. We were studying poetry. I remember studying the Beatles song lyric "Blackbird" from their White album. The lyric went like this, "Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly." Later, the words "broken wings," would take on a strong significance in my life. And the lyric "learn to fly" reminded me of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach - a book I had read in 6th grade. We were to write a poem, and the teacher gave us a poetry writing formula to follow. The poem went like this:

Life is beautiful.

Beauty is life.

You are life.

For you are beautiful.

I gave it to the English teacher, and to my surprise she called me to her desk. She asked me where I got this poem. I told her I had written it, and she told me that I could not have written it. That I must have gotten it from someplace else. I knew I had not copied it. I figured the poem must have been good, because the teacher told me I had to write another poem. This time she said I must follow the poetry writing formula.

It was at that moment that I became disillusioned with my teachers. The poem and feeling that generated it were genuine, because I had fallen in love with a girl who was a year younger than I. She was the inspiration for the poem.

I had a similar experience with my piano teacher when I was in the third grade. The teacher had given me a formula to write a song. When I played the music for the piano teacher, he had the same response as the English teacher. Again, I had not followed the formula but had simply written the song. The piano teacher commented to my mother, that I must have heard the song or got it from my memory, and then wrote it down. When the same thing happened with my English teacher, I knew I had written something so good that she could not believe I had written it myself. I wrote another poem for the English teacher. I followed the poem writing formula. Then, she accepted the poem. I knew deep in my heart that I had been dismissed, and not valued for something good I knew I had done.