The Lesson. Poem by Michael Walker

I look back on my years of teaching
in international schools after leaving.
The students from other countries
were at IELTS and Cambridge courses,
which I thought were good motivators,
being based on written and spoken exams.
My lessons succeeded one another
across a range of textbooks and tapes.
Tapes that I played over and over,
hoping repetition was the way to go.

A chapter in one book was about lives
of celebrities in sport, music, politics.
There was a thinly-disguised story
about the Spice Girls' Victoria,
who later married David Beckham.
She is always 'Posh' in the media,
and she does wear fine designer clothes,
as well as having a model's good looks.
This came across to me as another chapter
in the book of teaching life, quite good.

One student from Switzerland, though,
challenged the whole 'celebrity' issue.
She said to me, and the others:
'Why do we always study celebrities? '
'Everybody is important. Everybody'.
I was taken aback, but she was right.


-3 July,2016.