Motivation: a poem by Caliban’s Revenge

Caliban’s Revenge reflects on the state of teaching today

MOTIVATION

They told me to be “CUSTOMER CENTERED”

So I left work and went to the American style mall
and got a second job in Argos.
I worked there for a week
Nobody noticed
Until I had a teaching observation and got “unsatisfactory”.

They said no,
we mean LEARNER centred
We want you to give them OWNERSHIP of their education.

And that made sense.

So I went to payroll
And I got on the system
And I added all the students as managers

They said no,

We mean we want you to INSPIRE them
To ACHIEVE
BEYOND
their POTENTIAL
…
…
…
And I said
“That doesn’t sound right.”
But they told me not to be cynical
to DRILL DOWN
and THINK
OUTSIDE
THE BOX

And I didn’t understand what that meant at all,
But I left the box
And bought all the steroids and Ritalin I could find
And I gave it to the students
And I don’t know if that inspired them but it was very popular.

But they said NO that is DEFINITELY not what they meant

I felt a bit at a loss at this point
And I said “Look,
for fucks sake
what do you want from me?”

And they smiled
And the said
We want you to be MOTIVATED
We want you to be AMBITIOUS
We want you to LIVE YOUR DREAMS
And I thought
oh

So I collected every knife from the building
and hid in the basement,
And I made a coat out of the knives

And now I whisper to myself in a language
That managers don’t understand

Its made of whale song

And half remembered summers of innocence

And its FULL
of
MEANING

And if any of those replicants
come into the basement

I’ll kill the plastic bastards before they can eat me.