I hear them all.

The voices of my students

past and present

echo in this circus

stripped from the natural place

where learning should go

into the words of best practices

and waivers and emails, and wait!

don’t move from your computer (like that’s healthy),

and here’s a 100 page document to read yesterday, and

we have your back (we’ll work together)

if (not when) you die (Shouldn’t we always have people’s backs?),

but don’t be dramatic because we’re all in the same boat,

even if the student don’t know what an idiom, metaphor, or simile is.

That’s my job. I know.

But I hear them all.