The #coffeechugPLN chat was brewing up a full bodied discussion earlier this week when a fresh cup of inspiration got poured into my mental mug.

We were discussing growth, and then it hit like the smell of  fresh brewed  java in the morning. Growth makes me think of gardening.

I am not a gardener in the agrarian sense. In fact I don’t like working outdoors at all, except the BBQ.
Yet,a garden provides bountiful analogies of the classroom.

I wondered if we were the roto-tillers, scarecrows, planters or weeders in the classroom?
This left me thinking about the various roles we play as teachers in the garden of learning.

If I am a roto-tiller, I turn the soil of the mind to allow it to aerate, to let air into a compacted space, to prepare the land for planting. I might also be too forceful in the way I up-heave everything whether it is needed or not. As a roto-tiller I also make a lot of noise, sometimes it scares things off.

If I’m a scarecrow, I am on watch, maybe a little un-moving, just always there; I’m vigilant, still able to provide some protection but mostly ineffective, taken for granted and tired. I might now only provide decoration in the garden, but have not been useful for a time.

As a sower/planter I  place seeds in neat rows or scatter them haphazardly, in both cases I do not know if they will take root and produce something? As a planter I might plant the seeds too close together and they can choke each other out, or if I scatter them without regard to the proper soil, they may fall on infertile ground and die.

When I am a weeder, I must get close to the crops to weed out what has not been intentionally planted. The role of weed puller is hard. It requires digging down deep to get rid of things that might choke off my crops, and may have been there a long time. Weeding requires diligence, patience and knowledge of what to keep and discard. As a weeder I might pull out the wrong thing if I am not focused on the job. If I tend to my garden attentively, it will yield abundantly.

No matter where you harvest, the payoff  comes with time and in its due season. It will always be worth the dirt under your nails  and the sweat on your brow because you have invested your time tending to the soil of intellectual development and constant  gardening learning. 

I’ll save the roles of waterer, pruner and harvester for the next crop. Feel free to plant some rows yourself.

If you were curious how this all got here from there? This is what transpired on the #coffeechugPLN