I <3 teaching

I enjoy teaching young kids. Maybe because I'm childish myself, but I understand the way their brains are wired. I live in a world of imagination. When you study history, you need to project yourself in a world that no longer exists, and it's something children find easy to do. I often get lost in alternative universes. When a little girl tells me she saw a dragon yesterday, it doesn't irritate me. I've been talking to Benjamin Franklin in my head.

Yesterday I was teaching one of my pupils. This year I have no time to do anything (seriously) and this is a labour of love. I accepted to teach these kids because I enjoy their company. Their mother pays me but truthfully, I would do it for nothing.

We were studying a limerick by Edward Lear, one of my favourite.

"There was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin:
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin."

After we had both laughed over it and discussed relative pronouns (grammar is fun), I asked him if he ever wrote poetry. He looked scandalized at the suggestion.

"I'm only ten! And poetry is hard."

I told him that poetry didn't have to be hard. I explained how French poetry is all about the length of the verse (so 8, 10, 12 syllables for instance) whereas English poetry is about stresses. I had brought some examples of "calligrammes", like this one.



"Why don't you write a calligramme? It won't have to rhyme."

And he did. He wrote his first poem in English. We read it out loud, trying to feel the stresses, changed a few words, and then he dated it and signed it.

"And I can write one whenever I want?"

It's hard to express what makes teaching so great. It's often a thankless, dreary job. You feel like you're swimming upstream. Have you noticed that when a child fails, it's the teacher's fault, but when he succeeds, it's due to his parents? I don't teach large classes, I can only imagine how draining it must be.

But having a little boy dedicate his first poem to you, and smile as if he just won a lifetime supplies of Nintendo games, well...
As I left the building, holding the poem against my chest because it didn't fit in my bag, I felt like I was over the moon.

So here is one of my favourite poets, Pablo Neruda, and one of my favourite poems, in honour of L's first poem ever.


If you forget me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine