The premise behind Teaching with Fire is that poetry stirs up an inner conversation about questions, emotions, and things that matter. Because poetry slows us down and focuses our attention—it can yield poignant insights into what is most significant and enduring in our work and life.

To create Teaching with Fire, we asked educators to choose a poem that had deep meaning for them and write a reflection about the significance of the poem in their work or life. Hundreds of educators sent in heartfelt stories that spoke to their individual experiences and illuminated many of the universal aspects of the teacher’s life.

The contributors told us how much they appreciated the opportunity to step away from their busy lives and write these reflections.  We created this website to extend the same opportunity to you.  We invite you to send in reflections on poetry, short essays on the challenges and joys of your life as a teacher, or stories on lessons learned in the classroom. We encourage you to check out the many ways that you can join in the conversation.

We were delighted that Mark Nepo was one of the educators who answered our call for submissions for Teaching with Fire. The following is his insightful reflection on E.E. Cummings’ poem: You Shall Above All Things.

You Shall Above All Things

The only thing I’ve done longer than teach is, of course, learn. And not very far
along it became clear that teaching is learning with others by living into the
questions that experience opens.

It was in my second year of teaching—high school, then—that this couplet
appeared in my path; it’s been a teacher ever since.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Countless times I’ve tossed it like a hieroglyph before a class, and just as often
I have recited it to myself when puzzled at what to do next.

For in its construction is a telescoped wisdom, very Tao-like, that helps me
reunderstand my way in the world:

I’d rather learn . . . than teach. . . .
I’d rather learn from one . . . than teach ten thousand. . . .

And perhaps most important of all: I’d rather learn how to . . . than teach
how not to. . . .

In my own journey, I have been worn like a stone shaped by an unending
river—from young poet to young teacher to my tumble through cancer to my
life as a listener and teacher of the life that lives below all names.

And this chunk of truth continues to remind me that life is a journey from
no to yes, and that the classroom appears wherever we dare to imagine this
life as a transformative question that we somehow awaken into together.

—Mark Nepo
Poet-Teacher
Michigan

 

For the full poem, please see You Shall Above All Things.