I have been wanting to say something about my year as an ag teacher for a long time. It is a tough subject for me, mainly because there is so much I don’t understand about the experience I had. It was a year of ups and downs as I tried to learn how to best do my job while keeping up with standards, kid’s lives, parent input, and endless activities and last minute changes. Being a teacher pushed me to my edge every single day and made me realize just how little I understand in this world. So after a very confusing experience, this is what I settled on sharing from it.
I spent a year as an ag teacher, and I’ll put it bluntly: I
struggled. I desperately wanted to
create an experience for my students similar to the one I was lucky enough to
have as an FFA member. But I was disappointed when some (most) of my students
didn’t want it. How could they not share
my passion? How could they not recognize
what an opportunity was in front of them?
I wondered what I was doing wrong.
How could I reach more of my kids?
The answer is I don’t know.
Ha- you thought I had an answer, didn’t you. Well I’m coming to find out, there are a lot
more questions than there will ever be answers in this world. But I have been out of the education circle now
for about 4 months, and I think I have a little
piece of it figured out.
I happened to come across a Ted Talk video (It's amazing. Watch here if you have time. He compares education to ag so it's a winner.) from Ken Robinson (super genius) and he made a statement that left me pondering:
“Life is not linear. It is organic.”
While we can look at life as a series of steps, a go to
school, grow up, get a job, get married, have kids, kind of progression, that
isn’t how it really happens. Think of
all the times you look back on something and think, “wow, that was about the
most roundabout way I could have done that.” Or, “I wish I had majored in this
instead.” Or even something as simple as, “I really should have eaten breakfast
this morning.”
We don’t move linear most of the time. We try.
We aim for efficient, straight lines.
But usually life gets in the way.
And education is the same. I
expected my students to take steps up a ladder.
I expected my greenhands to find something that interested them and
pursue it, my sophomores to be studying to do better the next year, and my
seniors to be devoted to putting a finishing touch on their high school careers.
But that is linear.
Some of my seniors had not found something they cared enough about to
devote themselves to. Some of my
greenhands had found something so inspiring, they were willing to work
tirelessly to achieve more. And some of
my students were just trying to stay awake.
I pushed my students relentlessly to be at the stage I
thought they should be at, based on their age.
But now I know that there are some 8th graders who are more
mature than college students. There are
some juniors who are terrified they never will find their passion, or worse, haven’t ever even
considered that there is more to life than waiting for the weekend to get here.
I think what made ag classes inspire me as a high school
student is the fact that they were organic. Yes we had to jump through the hoops and build
from plant tissues to plant nutrients to plant chemistry. But we also got to take a day off of school
and go out in a farmer’s pasture and look at his soil and meet 150 kids that we
didn’t see every day. And that was
exciting and different and organic. And when things are exciting and different is
when we find our passions.
Students don’t move an inch up a learning growth chart each
week. But when something inspires them,
when something organic happens, they jump miles. Looking back, I would have been a much more successful
teacher had I thought like this. Looking
forward, I find myself much more at ease, no longer pressuring myself to
continue to climb the rungs of a ladder, but realizing that the roads we take sometimes
wind.
