Schoolyard Garden.

If I could change one thing in the world,

I would make school a garden.

A place for students to grow.

I want kids to grow up in a time where educators have the right tools to teach,

and plow,

and sow,

and reap the seeds of success.

I would make it so the school system is not based off success.

No child would feel like a failure,

or a flop.

Teachers would learn to teach their kids to leap.

To be bookworm turned butterfly.

At  graduation schools would not give out caps,

they would give graduates wings,

chicken wings!

Yeah, yeah yeah!

Schools should have chicken wings,

So no child would leave hungry,

whether that be of the belly or the mind.

when I become a teacher

I will feed every student like they are mine.

I will spoon feed them sonnets

when Shakespeare be too hard to swallow in one bite.

I will teach them not to bite their tongues.

Teach them that their arms are vines

reaching for the sky.

And if the really need to-

Really need to

they can call out in my classroom without warning.

My classroom door will come with a warning saying

“Caution! There is love & learning blooming here, please do not crush it.”

And on days when my kids want to crush it

Because all they momma & daddy taught them was to destroy anything good.

Days when their fist be wrecking balls,

and their mouth be abandoned construction site waiting for the next project to sink in

I will remind them that this classroom is a garden.

Here we don't break nothing but the bounds of expectations.

Have you ever had somebody believe in you?

Really believe in you.

Somebody who will take the time to water you

from the roots up.

I will take my kids hope

and hold it in my my back pocket.

I will save it for days when they feel like they don't belong  to nobody.

I will remind them they belong to me.

But mostly importantly they belong to themselves.

They belong here in this classroom garden.

I teach them to leaves their doubt at the door,

to let it fall like dead matter off branches.

Because we don't have room for nothing negative here.

Here we are a whole ecosystem,

and everybody got a job,

and everybody grows,

and everybody knows

what it feels like to be loved.

When I'm a teacher all my students will be loved.

I will tend to them.

Let  them soak up all the scholarly shine in my sun.

None of them will get picked on, like petals.   

They will unlearn seeing their darkness as dirt.

I will teach them to see their skin as soft soil.

A place for something to grow.

And I promise you if believe in them,

my schoolyard garden.

I promise you they will grow.