What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

What and how can our children learn, now that in-person school is such a rare commodity? Brad Aaron Modlin’s poem about missing a day of school gives us some comfort: while we wait (and wait!) for school to return to normal, perhaps there is a parallel curriculum. Thank you to educator and artist Rebecca Bellingham for sharing this poem with me.

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What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade 

By Brad Aaron Modlin 

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, 

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark 

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s 

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else— 

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted 

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks, 

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough. 

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence. 

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions, 

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person 

add up to something.