When she received our call for submissions, high school educator Ariane White saw it as a pedagogical as well as an artistic opportunity. Moved by the shift in the country’s leadership, she chose to express her reaction in the following poem. She then used her poem as a teaching and organizing tool, sharing it with colleagues and students in an effort to inspire them to engage creatively with this moment in history. In her poem, a variation on the inaugural “praise song,” White calls on teachers to renew their commitment to nurturing all young people in their pursuit to experience the richness of life.

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Ariane White serves as a college adviser to low-income, first-generation high school students at One Voice, a nonprofit agency in Santa Monica, California, that provides wraparound services to low-income families. She has previously taught high school English literature and humanities and has studied globalization, humane education, and nonviolence and social change.