how learning happens while building a garden bed

1.  Use the appropriate tool inappropriately
2.  Fantasize the result of your labor and assume your binding spell and a little luck will be enough
3. Overestimate your ability to do it by yourself
4.  Confuse the top with the bottom
5. Worry about waking up your teenage son, outside whose window you are noisily hammering
6.  Ignore the details
7.  Forget that preparation and clean up are actually longer than the build

multiple choice

A.

...but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes

the head gardener said from across her desk

which is larger than mine which is larger

than my students’.  It does give her some respect --

she’s almost at the top of the school-desk

chain, after all.

I mean, I know I’m just grounds maintenance

-sometimes-

and even need boxes

-occasionally-

But mostly, I’m the one who lets the Portulaca grow.

What I Do doesn’t fit into those boxes

It began so hopefully.

I took a seat, noticed the books that lined the shelves

behind her by authors I didn’t necessarily agree with.

Still don’t, filled as they are with all those foolish

lists and diagrams and charts.

And boxes.  

She opened my file, and with it the End-of-Year Conversation --

“You’re the best teacher I’ve got, you know

that don’t you?”

I mumbled some uni-syllables in some un-rememberable

order: “Wow. No. Um. Yes. Well. Oh. Um. Thanks.”

and considered (not too guiltily, I must confess),

the Pay-for-Performance payout I would get.

… but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes

B.  

You see, you and me, we can’t have a real relationship

if your job is to judge me, compare me to my friends,

and by those boxes that you checked

during a half-dozen ten-minute “Spot Observations” --

determine my salary.

Even you don’t like doing it, I get that, please don’t

tell me.  Even within an argument essay,

that's a pretty lame attempt at pathos.

C.

It’s all irrelevant anyway --

there will never be enough money

for us all to be Exemplary.

Race to the Top means someone’s at the bottom --

competition in our world sows even more doubt

and insecurity than we already know.

We are all the lettuce of the parable --

who need more water and less sun and certainly

less blame for not growing well.

D.

And what seeds are we really sowing?

Do we truly believe that the re-seeded Portulaca will bloom

in the cracks of our neighborhood sidewalks?

Or should we weed them out?

Rev up the Weed Eater and lop off their little blooming heads

to make things more tidy?

Don’t judge me for how many blossoms

there are, or how many seeds take root --

because some will never find their way under the concrete to the light

and others have been blown so far away

and planted themselves in places where

the woman holding the garden hose speaks another language.

E.

Schools are not Businesses
Students are not Consumers

Knowledge is not a Product

F.

You wanna know what our schools really need?

We need Professional Development we seek out ourselves

and you pay for it, and we convince all our colleagues

to come along because it will make us all Exemplary,

Racing to the Top as if we were holding hands

in a long line of Red Rover Red Rover

and we’re going to hold so tight that noone we call over

will ever be able to break through.

And we really don’t care if we get more money

for how tight we hold hands or

when our name gets called or

if we break through and get to bring someone over

to our side.   We’re the ones who would rather be

happy than rich and you know it --

and you’ve taken advantage of it for far too long

We need more men.  More people of color.

We will get neither if the seeds

of funding and fairness

don’t find a place to grow

We need accountability -- of course we do.

We would be the first to admit this.   

We strive every single goddamn day to be

accountable to our students -- and ourselves.

But it’s hard, because there’s no box for

Makes Moments of Joy or  

Uses Love to Impart Knowledge, or

Demonstrates Authenticity

And even if there were, there would still

be a gardener, looking out the kitchen window

comparing us to our fellow flowers

in the window box

We need our own mentor texts

(red ones and yellow ones and even some purple ones)

to cross-pollinate with the convictions of youth

and create a whole new, fearless hue.