"Homage to the End of Winter", oil on canvas, by Halima Washington

 

     I spent a good part of this morning trying to create curriculum for the final two months of the year, and all I seemed to create was an abundance of frustration. I mentally struggled and fought at my desk for several hours, as though making lesson plans was like building a house. I hammered away at ideas, nailed stray thoughts together, sawed ideas into pieces, and in the end, all I produced was a strong feeling of failure. At noon I had no better idea what to do with my scholars in April and May than I had when I started this hard labor several hours earlier.

     As I thought about it over lunch, I realized that I had been thinking that creating good lessons was like hammering a building together, whereas it’s really more like helping a good garden grow. A teacher is way more like a gardener than a construction worker. There’s much more patient waiting involved than forceful fabricating and assembling. Good lesson plans grow, and in order to grow, they have to be gently cared for by a teacher who is willing to wait. I should have done more waiting this morning – more waiting for the ideas to quietly germinate instead of wildly thrashing around in my mind in the hope that a decent lesson could be thrown together. Excellent teaching is never thrown together. The only way it ever appears in a classroom is through a natural growth process. The teacher has to uncomplainingly watch and listen, and soon the ideas, sure enough, will push their way up in his mind like sprouts in the spring.