Are You a Flower or a Weed?

I have found that in so many professional development classes or meetings since I became a teacher, we have compared teaching to gardening. We talk about putting our students in the right environment so they have the sunshine and soil they need and how we must water them in order to make them grow. The problem with this metaphor is I am not a gardener. I couldn't tell you the difference between a daisy and a daffodil. I have killed every house plant I owned. Given a garden to tend, I'd most likely either drown all the plants or let them all shrivel up and die. I suppose the comparison does work, then, since in both gardening and teaching, I spend most of my time winging it, but it was never my favorite way to think about teaching.

Recently, though, I was reading a book called The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. In one scene of the story, the two young girls are helping a neighbor by pulling weeds in his garden. At one point, one girl comes across something in the garden and she isn't sure if it's a weed or something meant to be in the garden. When she asks the gardener what it is, he says, "It depends very much on whose point of view it is. What's a weed to one person might be a beautiful flower to another. It depends very much on where they're growing and whose eyes it is you're seeing them through."

I have often felt like a weed in my life. People have made me feel unwanted or annoying. I have often been overlooked. On the flip side, friends, family members, and teachers have also made me feel special and beautiful and worth having around, like a flower. It wasn't because I changed and became something else. A flower is a matter of perspective. As a child, I used to love blowing the seeds of dandelions across the yard. I had no idea that spread something that others didn't like. They had this magical quality to me. Did you know "weeds" are often hardier than traditional flowers and end up providing food that helps bees survive when the weather gets bad?

I may not be a gardener. I may not teach lessons at school that provide the right amount of water for growth. I honestly usually have no idea what each flower in my classroom needs. What I do hope is that I provide the right place for them to all be flowers. No matter how much they disrupt a class or fight me or refuse to work, I hope that a student never feels like they don't belong or that I want to pull them out.

Poet Ian Emberson once said that "A weed is a flower in the wrong place." This isn't just a lesson for teachers or kids. This is something I believe affects every single person in the world. If you are feeling like a weed, you may be in the wrong place. Find gardeners (friends, coworkers, significant others) that see your unique beauty. Find an environment where you feel wanted. There are a lot of gardens out there. If you haven't found yours yet, keep searching.