Everything from Seeds

It really is interesting to consider just how much of who we are depends upon seeds.  On the purely physical level, almost everything that we eat to gain energy and grow can be traced back on the food chain to seeds that grow the grass eaten by cows and other animals, or that are actually eaten by birds and rodents and even humans.  We put seeds in our bread and in our cereal and in many other things that we eat, but the true beauty of seeds is the way that they can become something completely different when they're planted and they sprout and grow.

As a teacher, I see myself as a seed planter, not a knowledge imparter.  I don't consider my job to be to transfer knowledge from my brain to the brains of my students--rather, I consider my main task to be to provide the conditions in which learning is possible, in which students can find the desire and ability to learn new things, but--more importantly--also find the desire to learn.  After all, we can't grow and develop into the people that we're meant to be if we don't want to learn and grow.  By the end of a semester or a school year, it's much less important that a student has memorized certain facts or processes or information than it is that a student has reflected upon their own lives and the ways that they fit into the world.

So I try to plant seeds.  I try to instill a love for learning by teaching students how to learn, rather than simply focusing on the information they're supposed to "know" by the end of a term.  I make it possible even for someone who struggles with learning to do well in my classes by making an effort, whether they're able to do everything or know everything that the state says they should know by a certain age or not.  I want these seeds that I plant to give them a sense of hope and a feeling that they're able to do anything that faces them, even if it's something very difficult, by approaching it in the right way.

With these seeds, they hopefully are gaining something that will help them later in life--next week or ten years from now.  I've given up needing to see immediate results in the classroom, and I'm much more interested in how they'll be able to do next year, or five years from now when they're in college.  Once I plant the seeds, of course, it's up to the students themselves to nurturer them and help them to grow into something healthy and beautiful, and I have to trust in the process, knowing that I more than likely will never see the actual results of the seeds that I've planted.

On a more basic level, if a tree seed is planted in the wrong kind of soil, then it simply won't grow, or any growth will be stunted.  The tree will not be able to reach its potential.  Unfortunately, we try to treat each young person as if they were all the same--but every young person isn't a maple tree, that can thrive in New England, but that wouldn't even survive on a mountainside in Colorado.  Are these seeds wasted?  Unfortunately, many people aren't able to overcome the treatment they received as young people when they become adults, and they live their lives never really becoming anything near what they had the potential to become.  It's truly a shame, but it happens all the time, unfortunately.

I think about seeds a lot when I'm teaching, and I think of myself not just as a sower of seeds, but as someone who's helping other people to learn how to nurture those seeds and to help them grow to maturity.  You have had many seeds planted in you over the years, from great ideas to strategies for success to possible career tracks to the fulfillment of your own potential.  Do you help those seeds to grow?  If not, how could you do so?  How could you make the seeds of your life grow into beautiful plants, whether they be large and beautiful or small and delicate and beautiful?  And how can you plant seeds in the minds and hearts of others, seeds that can help them to make the most of their own lives?  One of our greatest goals in life should be to help others to navigate life in ways that are healthy and that make them happy, and we can certainly help others to do so by planting healthy seeds in healthy soil.



(By the way, one of the ways that I love to plant seeds is to share books that can help people to see life in wonderful ways.  Some of the books I like to give as gifts are Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Little Prince, Kitchen Table Wisdom, Prescriptions for Living, or books of poems by people like Robert Frost, Mary Oliver, or many others.  I'm planting seeds by giving the books as a gift, and the authors are planting their own seeds in their own ways.)