Prayer for a New Semester

No massacres, no guns at all, no death,
No sharp-turn, black-ice, driving-to-work car wrecks,
No suicides, no overdose, no heart attacks,
No valiant battle with cancer lost, no death.

And also just this one semester,
could everybody get to class on time?
Including me? And then, once we’re all there,
could we try to stretch each other’s minds?

This is a prayer for brilliant course design,
for follow-through, for good assignments meant
to let my students show me all they’ve learned,
not sort them into piles of can and can’t.

May we focus most on what matters most,
and may deep learning grab us in our hearts.