Teaching is like . . .

A maturing tree with deep, deep roots

The students with their bright, shiny faces, their inquisitive nature, and their eagerness to learn are looking to us to nurture them and promote future healthy, well-rounded growth.  We will be most successful if we remember to look below the surface and take care of the whole student.  Their roots were developed long before they arrived in our classroom.  We need to remember that those roots are the source of their strength, what literally holds them up.  The student’s roots are hidden to us; we will have to ask them to share them with us and with the rest of the class.  Think about what a strong forest we would have with all of those intertwined roots.

The first year teacher, maybe feeling more like a sapling than a tree, will still have that strong base from their teaching education and their student teaching experiences.  If they look for them, they will find supports to hold them up in strong winds within their cohort, their new school, or maybe even in a teacher forum online.  They will be able to reach down into their own root system to hopefully find shared experiences with their students.  As they learn from their students, their successes and failures, their continued research for better curriculum and better classroom projects, and their constant conversations with their peers, the branches will grow stronger and their leaves will become abundant.

The classroom will only provide a good growing environment if the teacher(s) and the students work together to make it rich with experience and safe for everyone.  Imagine how strong and comfortable that tree would be with everyone working to keep it alive.  I can just see groups of children feeling free to explore; some sitting in the shade reading, some digging in the dirt and discovering what critters live there, some trying to determine how many leaves there are without having to count them all, some high in the branches making their own world of castles or spaceships, and some lying in the dappled sunlight below the tree, dreaming and imagining the next big thing that will change life as we know it.