“When spring comes the grass grows by itself. ” – Tao Te Ching

Ah, Spring.

Let me share this:  Spring is a promise.  I definitely have made my share of promises as a teacher, and it is encouraging that I have spring to remind me of promises.  It is just like that with me.  I tend to think of every student as a promise I keep to myself.

Teacher’s aren’t supposed to give up on students.  Are they?  When it gets really tough being a teacher, I just tell myself that each student is like a seed: a seed of a promise that I intend to keep.  Students are like gardens, and I could go on and on with the metaphors describing students as gardens.  Some are easy to tend to, some are challenging.  Some blossom early, others late.  Some take to this kind of soil, some thrive in that kind of soil.  In many ways, teachers are like the gardeners of society, but I think that would be too much to put on a humble teacher like myself.    As they say, it takes a village to bring up a child.

Classroom teaching is rigorous, and the courses I teach can be very difficult for the student who lacks reading skills at their intended grade level.  I try to banish that thinking, and take each student where they are at, to build upon their natural instinct to learn.  It is when this drive comes into conflict with a student lacking motivation to achieve comes the practice of an experienced…..gardener.  Not all teachers are willing to investigate what is making learning to read so difficult.  Not every teacher can afford the time it takes to personalize an effective mode of teaching.  Yet I’ve found that if you want you students to thrive, you have to go to those lengths to learn what it takes for each student to blossom.

One of the tools in my arsenal is my own promise to be the best teacher I know to be.  I know it takes much work, benevolence, tolerance, even a little luck.  I can’t always know when it’s going to rain, no matter what the weatherman predicts.  Still, the love of learning overrides everything I do in the classroom, regardless of the weather changes.  It is my promise to tend to each student as if they were the only flower growing in my garden.  After all, beauty is what we perceive it to be, and I see a whole garden of flowers blooming in my classroom everyday.  It truly is a sight to behold, even it it does take an awful lot of tending, weeding, spacing and pacing, cultivating, enriching, mulching and pruning, fertilizing, watering, nurturing, and of course admiring all the work you put into it.

Happy Spring!