Education as Gardening
I had already thought of the metaphor as educators as gardeners before I saw it on the UW website link. There are a variety of styles of gardening to suit the climate and setting – trying to force tropical plants to grow outside in a Canadian winter isn’t going to work, so you really have to listen to what the plants (learners) are telling you. Sometimes this isn’t always through words. A gardener as educators does not ‘make the plants grow’ – they know how to do this on their own. Instead, the gardener provides the conditions in which a plant can flourish – removal of weeds and barriers to light or space, amending the soil, providing trellises, assembling combinations of plants that support each other’s growth, etc. Different plants need different things to succeed, so growing an orchid is different than cultivating dandelions, for example. I used dandelion specifically here, as some plants may be seen as ‘weeds’, but have great hidden value, in this case as a medicine or food plant, much like all students have something to offer.
https://unsplash.com/photos/cTtE2FlIRoU
I chose this image specifically as it speaks to the team effort involved in larger scale of community gardening. An educator as gardener is not alone in their service to students, but rather benefits from a collaborative approach. The image depicts a new garden, but teaching is more like tending your community over the long term. As any experienced gardener knows, gardening is slightly different every year and you gain skills over the long term.
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Example for "Education as Gardening":
https://unsplash.com/photos/cTtE2FlIRoU
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