Here’s a comic based on a first year teaching experience submitted by a friend and colleague of mine. Being an art teacher, he’s the super artsy-type and actually wrote his story up in poetic form! Check it out below the comic. If you’d like your story to be a 180Dayz comic and part of our new book, send it my way at 180dayzcomics@gmail.com. Don’t forget to check out the 180 Dayz New Teacher Book Project we just launched at Kickstarter.com. Support it and make it happen! Thanks!
First year teaching visual art classes
Needed another writing component
I am a poet
I write poetry
I will have a poetry jam
“Bring some poems on this date,” I said.
Chairs were already circled when they arrived
They sat
I cleared my throat and read “The Old Fart At Play” by Don Van Vliet
I read it in in my best Howlin’ Wolf voice
As it was the voice Mr. Vliet would try and emulate
I have attached a copy
I finished to complete silence
Asking if anyone had some poems
Out they came
The one to go first was a nervous looking student that volunteered
He began
In Spanish
He passionately continued in Spanish
Only half the room could understand the words
But everyone was leaning towards him
Hanging on his every breath
When he began to cry in an uncontrollable burst
Collapsing to his knees after finishing the last line
His friends ran to him
Comforting him as if he were James Brown unable to continue from exhaustion
There was a lot of discussion in Español
Words and expressions in an urgent mode
We waited
Respectfully
We could not understand
Even the students that could habla
I asked
Respectfully
“Please tell us what you said”
It turned out to be a poem about GOD
His deep conviction about how he truly believed in his faith
Wowie Zowie!!!
I had never experienced anything quite as moving
It was the genuine article
We all hugged him
We all knew we had felt something real
I like to think it was the magic of poetry
Write about your pain
Write about your joy
Then you own it
You understand it and live on for the better
We somehow got together and continued
With a love poem about Mary Jane
– R. MacGeorge
180 Dayz 