ON TEACHING: Waiting for the Flowers to Bloom

“Waiting” is an activity (or non-activity) that a good teacher must willingly take part in on a daily, sometimes hourly basis – and it can actually be a very rewarding activity. We usually think of waiting as a burden and a pain, something we do because we can’t yet do what we really want to do. We say things like, “Can you believe that I had to wait that long?”, or, with a frown, “I guess I’ll just have to be patient and wait.” Indeed, for some people, waiting is one of the worst possible punishments, an activity appropriate for a place like hell. However, this morning I’m thinking of waiting in a different way, as an activity that, for a good teacher, could be beneficial and rewarding. The teacher and his students are like a gardener and his flowers. Surely the gardener understands the rewards and joys of patient waiting. The days and weeks pass, and the gardener often does little more than quietly pass the time. He knows that great forces are at work underground as the seed and its surroundings silently work their miracles. His most important act, in some ways, is to wait. And so it is for the good teacher. Like the gardener, he knows that incredible forces way beyond his control are at work in this miracle called “education”, and that he must humbly accept these forces and allow them to work. In this sense, waiting has a lot to do with humility. The teacher understands that what happens in his classroom is not about him. It’s about the students and knowledge and wisdom and epiphanies, and often the best thing the good teacher can do is stand out of the way and wait. Flowers bloom in their own good time, and so do students.