Nothing Rhymes with Neutral

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

Due to somewhat popular demand, this year we continued the now SITT tradition of closing out the first day of SITT with a topical poem. Please find the SITT 2025 poem below.

Andy Jones

Nothing Rhymes with Neutral

The inclusive classroom
includes us, too.

With apologies
to that treasure,
our favorite professor
of Plant Pathology,
we may enter
with the sunny point of view,
with the celebratory oratory stories
of a Sara Dye, or,
likely, something darker.

Whether a logician
intoning about protocol,
or a circus barker
mishandling the whiteboard marker,
we are compelled, like a candle, to illume.
We ourselves resemble the room,
never neutral.
In time, we find
that nothing rhymes with neutral.

Every classroom chair can share a story.
Sometimes, cowed, the story whispers its name.
Sometimes it is proudly proclaimed
in the postscript of an overdue essay.
Don’t pass over
the student who hovers
at the door.
Reach out to the holdout.

One student adjusts glasses;
another cups her ear.
Whether the absentee,
or the favorite returner,
when it comes to learners,
each must be reached.

We build slides decks, yes,
but also ladders, ramps,
alternate routes through the thicket
of a perilous syllabus.
Some students seem ready
for the scenic path;
others need a shortcut and a machete.
Everyone needs a map.

A slight smile lifts
when the room’s quietest hand
rises, trembling, yet certain,
and the room tilts to listen
to the unexpected gift,
confidence rebuilt.

Some of us teach inclusively
From the tightrope,
improvisers suited for the high wire.
Others behold their students and light fires:
they deploy student amplifiers,
they hand the chalk to spitfires,
they enlist clarifiers.

Some of us follow trends;
some narrow the scope.
With captions I can see
that the bell tolls also for me.
My fallow mind tumbles
like a kaleidoscope.
In the end, each student,
peacemaker or spitfire, requires
a stubborn kind of hope.