Ode to Teachers

As signaled in its title, “Ode to Teachers” is most fundamentally a poem written in praise of educators. The speaker’s narrative recollections provide the primary basis for such a high assessment of teachers’ worth, value, and importance. While the poem leaves its most direct forms of praise for the final stanza, when the speaker groups their memories of the anonymous teacher among a collection of other treasured memories and experiences, the narrative of personal growth and development as a whole is presented in service of a larger case for the central importance of teachers. Turning to the other stanzas, the developmental stages Mora lays out in the transitions from one stanza to the next—moving from visual recognition, to verbal exchanges, to written self-expression—are marked at every turn by the teacher’s supportive presence: their smile, kind remarks, written encouragement and praise, and so forth. Mora likewise points toward the effects of this support in the penultimate stanza, as the speaker finally expresses their growing appreciation outwardly in the form of a raised hand. By raising their hand, the speaker not only demonstrates their newly discovered confidence, they also evince their own recognition of the value that the teacher places on student participation.