This is a great poem that sums up the important relationships that exist between parent and teacher, home and school. I saw it on a classroom wall in Sydney today, and it really made me stop and think about the way I teach and how I might be able to involve parents in their children’s education. At current, as a casual teacher, there is not much I can do in this regard, however once I start permanent teaching it will be at the top of my agenda.  The thumbnail image chosen for this piece (Piles of Salt by Luca Galuzzi) ties nicely into a theme I keep coming back to: that we are all seperate but neither isolated nor independent (both from our environment and in relation to each other).

I dreamed I stood in a studio
And watched two sculptors there,
The clay they used was a young child’s mind
And they fashioned it with care.One was a teacher; the tools being used
Were books and music and art,
One a parent with a guiding hand
And a gentle, loving heart.

Day after day the teacher toiled
With touch that was deft and sure,
While the parent laboured just as hard
And polished and smoothed it o’er.

When at last their task was done
They were proud of what they had wrought,
For the things they had moulded into the child
Could neither be sold nor bought.

And both agreed they would have failed
If they had worked alone;
For behind the parent stood the school
And behind the teacher, the home.

David Bowen