As a high school teacher, patience is one of my virtues and vices. I can tell the same student 3 times in a one hour class period to take his headphones out of his ear every…single…day of the school year. I can remind my students day-in-and-day-out, every time we write a quotation we need the citation, which is the what? (choral response) “Page number.”
My patience struggles with wanting immediate results from teaching, which is not something I get very often. For immediate results, I turn to gardening, more specifically, seed planting. My nasturtiums have sprouted. I had to move them from the raised bed since I discovered they acted like ground cover.
At first, when I planted seeds, every day I checked to see if anything had come up. After a week of nothing, I felt like a failure and would never be able to grow anything. Nature of course choose this moment of doubt to give me glimmers of hope and remind me that I can be a gardener, even though my past attempts have been well-intentioned.
As a teacher I have to remember that my job is to plant seeds. Some of them will grow. Sometimes I will get to see the results. More importantly I have to be patient and have faith in the growing/learning process.
