Planting a Garden

“DO NOT CALL ME UNTIL AUGUST!” I told my administrator as I left the building the last week of school–due to give birth any day. For the first time in a long time, I had no intention to work over the summer. I wouldn’t even think about school until returning for in-school inservices. No summer PD. No committees. No volunteering to help at orientation. No club activities.

Sometime in July my phone rang. Admin. But she knew not to call me. Why was she calling? Am I being fired? I guess I should answer. “We need you to take a student teacher,” she said. “WHAT?! NO,” I shouted back. I thought (and probably also said aloud), “I have nothing to offer a student teacher.” I had no idea what hosting a university student could entail, and I wasn’t keen to find out. I told my administrator, “I need an easy year. I just had a baby!” But she pressed on, and gently reassured me that I can do this. I should do this. This will be good for me.

Ten years into my teaching career–I loved my job, was good at it, maybe even great. But it was starting to feel mundane with the hours, days, weeks, and months bleeding into one another. I was a fig tree that had a few rough seasons and would no longer produce fruit. Had my admin noticed the tree was slowly dying? I was starting to want something… else? Something more? But I wasn’t sure what. Then that call. “We need you to take a student teacher.” That certainly wasn’t the direction I thought I’d go. I told my admin I would think about it.

A few weeks and email exchanges later, I met Kaylan in a coffee shop. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect or how to embark on this journey, and neither was she. Without being callous, I tried to explain that I was unsure. She was too. So we decided: together. We’ll figure this out together.

And so began the most transformative time of my teaching career. A call to leadership. A call to mentorship. A call to revive the barren tree.

8:30pm, bzz bzz. Another text message. “What now?” Kaylan has yet another question about a lesson, a strategy, an idea. I whine about how she asks me so many questions. My husband says, “You have to help her.” He’s right. She is curious and she is hungry and I could not snuff it out. It will be worth it.

“What if we try it this way? In Dr. Tolley’s class, we learned about this strategy…” I roll my eyes and tell her, “I doubt it’ll work. The kids won’t do it. I’ve tried it before.” She persists, I give in. She was right; I was wrong–she executes her plan and the students participate. Her idea is a success. I was wrong. What else have I been wrong about?

A fight breaks out in the middle of her observation with the university supervisor. Two freshmen boys mouth off and start pushing each other. I rush to get them out of the room–she doesn’t deserve this. But she keeps going, like it was nothing. We could see she was nervous, but she held it together. Her confidence was shaken, but she held it together. I am so proud of her.

8th hour on March 13, 2020. We all get a message saying school will shut down, but nobody knows what this means. Eventually it becomes clear we’re not going back. But Kaylan had hit her stride. We weren’t finished. I wasn’t finished–I wanted more time with her. I looked forward to every day together. We’d figured it out together, and we weren’t finished.

I watch her college graduation on Zoom, cry alone in my office, and take a picture of her picture on the screen. We’d been emailing and texting every day because she helped me finish my mentor certification. She graduated, but I wasn’t finished. I wanted to keep doing this thing–this mentoring–again. Wanted to answer more questions, wanted to try new things, wanted to feel pride in someone else’s growth, and wanted to grow another teacher. Where empty branches had been, the fruit tree began to bud.

Wesley was always grumpy, and needed to be pushed. But he wanted to be a teacher, so I pushed him. I learned about tough love. Jamie doubted herself, but teaching was in her blood. I learned about building her up, so she’d shine her light. Rikki experienced failure, but she persevered. She refused to walk away from her dream. I learned about how my strength could help someone else recognize their own. Avery was quiet, but she would not remain silent. I learned how to help someone find their own voice.

Kaylan, now a teacher in my school, comes by my classroom. A call for proposals. “What if we make a presentation about… us?” So we did. And it was accepted. Twice. We talked about the power of mentorship to teachers, students, and leaders. We encouraged others to start their own journey into mentoring–to plant a seed. We encouraged them to figure it out: together.

Bright lights and a fancy dress. A special award: Mentor Teacher of Excellence. They nominated me, and I won. Somehow a reluctant and uncertain teacher cultivated strength in others. I may have influenced them, but really they influenced me. My tree began producing fruit again.

Now I dream of doing this forever–coaching, mentoring, leading, tending a garden of teachers…

I want to cultivate a garden where teachers grow.

to build rich soils with every necessary nutrient,

so teachers can blossom and share their fruit.

and when that fruit of knowledge is consumed,

the sweetness of it compels others to plant a seed.

to burrow down into the damp, dark earth only to emerge as something new.

until the garden is bursting and overgrown with teachers reaching and blossoming and planting.

a self-sustaining ecosystem of organically grown educators.