Appreciation Week

An ode to teachers for a week, a day

Who deserve our respect and adequate pay.

With salaries a punchline, an endless gag

Bartered off, bonded out and left to lag.

With unified voices, a strike, a stage

Demanding some action and basic outrage.

‘Well, sure,’ say the lawyers, who file a bill

That’s gutted, unfunded and left to wilt.

‘Of course,’ say the parents whose taxes pay

For overstuffed classrooms, an apple a day.

But nowhere toward the top of the list

Of things to progress, to mount an assist.

We've wars to win and terrorists to stop,

Let alone the dread brewing here in our shop.

Children lack outlets to unload their chests,

Save for forums of violence, full of behest.

Whose means of fulfillment is just to be heard

And turn, when they aren’t, to methods absurd.

They settle instead for unloading a clip,

A ‘magazine,’ a ‘cartridge,’ whatever your quip.

Semantics that muddle are meant to distract,

A trick to demean the scope of attacks.

‘But I raised my kids,’ tones change in a blink

‘You shouldn’t get credit for how my kids think.’

Except when those children choose not to agree

Then it’s from schools with agendas, you see.

A crossroads of topics are teachers today

Yet lost in the shuffle, elusive fair pay.

To teachers we owe much more than a date

We owe a solution, already too late.

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