Warm me

I am still knitting scarves for kids who are cold. Kids for whom education is the great equalizer, their only hope in this capitalist democracy where the poor most often stay poor and the rich get richer ... and bailed out. I'm still knitting scarves for kids whose teachers are getting disheartened because of the political battle being fought over whether they're teaching their students to read or just sitting around on their asses being useless, letting their students fail. I was a teacher in a high school for three years. If someone told me that I wasn't teaching my students, I very well may have walked out of that school that day and never gone back. It was hard enough work without being discredited and insulted. Are their teachers out there who are burned out, or have simply given up, and are just collecting a paycheck until they can retire? Yes, of course there are. But they're not the rule, by any means, particularly in a school district where excellence has been stressed -- and demanded -- for nearly a decade. My heart goes out to teachers who, every day, dig down deep in their hearts to wrap warm scarves of knowledge and thought and caring around their students, warming them to their very hearts, hearts so easily broken. I can't stop knitting.