I am a teacher. A special education teacher, which, to beat you to the punch, does not mean I have patience. I have to learn patience every year, just like my students have to learn new reading and math skills. This year, however, I am starting out with a slightly new perspective, which involves the same patience it takes to grow a garden. Let me explain.
A seed takes many things to grow, as we all know. One of those things is the right soil/warmth environment. Then their are the nutrients, the water and fertilizer. If you follow my metaphor, the teacher is the gardener, the students are the seeds, the soil is like a classroom environment, and the water and fertilizer are the lessons. The end goal is for there to be fruit, a harvest of skills and knowledge that will feed the growth of the student.
In years past, I have focused on the lessons I teach, practiced my delivery in my mind, wrote copious notes in my planner. I hoped that with the right words or activities that my little seeds would exclaim, "Ah ha!!" and sprout. And sometimes they did. Sometimes, the right nutrients was all that was needed. I hope this year to continue to give the right nutrients as I teach my students. But I believe, this year, I need to attend more to my soil.
What I have learned through gardening is that setting up the right growing environment really gets things growing. A heap of compost is like a super charged jump start. Now I won't be heaping any compost on my students, but I have spent more than my usual time and energy setting up my environment for learning.
The fertilizer is in place, the water is automatic, so that my students and I can focus on the growth.
This is one of those Reality-is-a-metaphor moments. The beauty of a garden for your kids is that it cannot be hurried, needs its own conditions and does not respond to manipulation or yelling or sulking. The thing we love about it is that it comes into being, its own little world, in response to what we have set out; we hope that we have understood correctly what needed to happen and what can happen. The separate existence part may be something new for your kids to grasp, but the garden also entices them to permit this. I think it's a terrific modality. Another psychologist I know, who works with ADD and other LD kids, brings *parrots* to his office. If the kids want the parrot to like them, they have to behave on its terms. Nothing artificial, nothing coercive, simply: how must I act to get the outcome I want?
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