My wife and I are teaching our own writing camp this week, and today’s assignment was to based a poem loosely on Billy Collins’ poem, “On Turning Ten.” This idea instantly occurred to me as I wrote along with our students, and here’s the result, for what it’s worth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On Becoming Standardized<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n (Inspired by Billy Collins\u2019 \u201cOn Turning Ten\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The whole idea makes me feel like I\u2019m being unmade,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like I\u2019m being dissolved like an Alka-Seltzer, fizzing and whining,<\/p>\n\n\n\n But ultimately disappearing , losing my solid form to join an amorphous mass,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or I am a unique, handcrafted piece of art being thrown on an assembly line<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be mashed into a widget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am being assimilated by the Borg,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fitted up with their mechanical parts, my mind part of the hive-mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Resistance is futile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You tell me it is for the best\u2014systemic change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But maybe you never really experienced the magic for yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe you never experienced the teachable moment<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or the flash of insight that showed you how to take a mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n From where it was to where you\u2019d like it to be,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or the vision, bigger than a #2 bubble, of what you want them to do,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who you want them to be,<\/p>\n\n\n\n What you want them to see,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Where you want them to go in the still solitudes of their minds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or the moment when a child sees beyond the horizon you have lead them to<\/p>\n\n\n\n And teaches you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now I am at the front of my room,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doling out the same pages of a workbook as the teachers<\/p>\n\n\n\n In room 219 or 222.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They don\u2019t let us paint our walls any more, or put up posters<\/p>\n\n\n\n That amuse or delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything must be learning targets, or instructions for aiming<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or holding the bow or arrows in better alignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And my room becomes a sterile space, devoid of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rubrics are posted,<\/p>\n\n\n\n And lists of strategies, as if we were at war or playing a team sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And my own pens and notebooks sit unused, their brainstorms swept out to sea,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their black and white thunder and lighting silenced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the end of a calling and the beginning<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of going through the motions\u2014of having a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walk to my room but it no longer feels like home, or a studio, or a garden,<\/p>\n\n\n\n But like a data processing plant, a factory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They want me to put away childish things,<\/p>\n\n\n\n And drive me toward grown up goals: bigger, higher numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems like only last week<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used to believe<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was nothing in my room but light,<\/p>\n\n\n\n The igniting of flames, and then fires, and sometimes blazes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But now I see rows of buckets,<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the steady, measured dripping that fills them. I cry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Becoming Standardized (inspired by Billy Collins) My wife and I are teaching our own writing camp this week, and today’s assignment was to based a poem loosely on Billy Collins’ poem, “On Turning Ten.” This idea instantly occurred to me as I wrote along with our students, and here’s the result, for what it’s worth. On Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[14,2,13,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}