I built it carefully.
Every module. Every instruction.
The welcome message I rewrote four times
to get the tone right,
warm but not needy,
clear but not cold,
the kind of welcome that says
you are in the right place
even if you are not sure yet.
I built the discussion prompts
so that the quiet ones could find an opening.
I built the assignments so that the person
with three jobs and a baby
could still do good work
in the hours that were actually available.
I thought about them.
I thought about them before they arrived,
which is a kind of care
that does not appear in any metric
and does not fit in any category
on the form where I rated myself annually
and was rated in return
by people who had never seen the course shell,
never read the welcome message,
never watched a struggling student
find their footing in the structure
I had built for finding footing.
The shell outlasted my contract.
I know this.
Someone else teaches in it now,
or a version of it,
the bones of what I made
still holding the shape of my thinking
while my name no longer appears
in the place where names go.
I do not need my name in that place.
I know what I built.
I know who it was built for.
The shell holds the shape of the care
and the care was always the point.
Lo que construí permanece. Aunque mi nombre no esté.
What I built remains. Even if my name is not there.
