It’s back to school week in northern Arizona, but not every student is in class yet. Plenty of kids miss the first day – or more – because they’re still on family vacations. When they return, comes the obligatory question for their teachers, “Did I miss anything?” It’s a question Terry Wilson has heard countless times during her 25 years teaching English and poetry at Coconino High School in Flagstaff. Her response? ‘That’s not the right question.’ In this week’s Poetry Friday segment, she shares an amusing poem by Tom Wayman about absenteeism.
TW: On the first couple of days of school I tell kids, ‘Here’s the protocol for using the pass to go to the bathroom. Here’s the protocol for turning in late work. Here’s how you do your vocabulary assignment. Here is the protocol for coming back after you’ve been absent to ask for what happened while you were gone.’ And I make the whole class chime back to me these words: ‘Here’s what you say, class. You say, ‘Ms. Wilson, what did I miss?’ instead of saying, ‘Ms. Wilson, did I miss anything?’ And inevitably after we do this sort of call and response, students come to me and say, ‘Did I miss anything? Did I miss anything?’ And sometimes I say back to them, ‘No, you didn’t miss anything.’ And they go, ‘Oh, good!’ And I go, ‘No, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. Do you remember what the question is that you’re supposed to ask? The question is: What did I miss?’
And so, I’m just going to repeat this again because this is important, what the students are asking – because the students have been trained to think this way – is, I am here to get points in the gradebook. And the way I get points in a gradebook – it happens different ways in different classes – sometimes there’s a worksheet to fill out. Sometimes, if they bring in four cans of corn at Christmas time, they get points in the gradebook. So, what they’re asking me is, ‘Did I miss an opportunity to get points in the gradebook?’
And my whole problem with that is that’s not how my classroom happens. Of course there are objectives, and there’s a plan every day for meeting those objectives. But inevitably, something happens – I’m going to say daily – that I didn’t plan and I didn’t know. And it happens because some student knows some political issue I don’t know about, or some country I’ve never heard of, or they’ve read something that connects to what we’re talking about that I haven’t read, and I can’t do all of that! I can’t plan it because I don’t know what’s in everyone’s heads. So, yes! For sure if you weren’t here, you missed something, and I might not even be able to tell you what it was.
It doesn’t make me angry. It does not make me angry! It makes me disappointed that kids have been trained to think that way.
So this is Did I Miss Anything, by Tom Wayman:
Did I Miss Anything?
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth.
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.
