The entire life cycle of the plant has so much intricacy and beauty. People literally marvel over the beauty of the flower and pray and give thanks for the deliciousness of the fruit, but I believe the unsung hero is the seed. After surviving the elements, the plant comes full circle to give some of the life it was once given, through the seed.
I compare the life of a teacher similar to that of a plant; growing, struggling at times and thriving in others. Like the plant, although we are eager to feed our students the fruit of knowledge, that is not what they need from us. Our students need to have experiences and stories of their own, they need the seed, the potential to learn and to grow on their own.
~ Investigate educational theories and philosophies to inform their practice ~
At the beginning of this two-year journey, we were asked to put ourselves along a continuum for each capacity, to try to reflect about where we saw ourselves in relation to our goals. I distinctly remember this activity and taking that stinky note and placing it as low as I could along the capacity to “investigate educational theories and philosophies to inform our practice.” At the time, I even struggled to make sense of what it meant, let alone find examples of how I might be building my capacity to do so. Two years later, I am surprised to find myself in a place where I feel that this is the capacity in which I have grown the most. It is difficult to pin-point any one event or experience that helped me develop this capacity, rather it feels like an awakening. An awakening of my own potential and an understanding for what it takes to tap into it. Being a teacher, I have learned, is a constant evolution that includes questioning every single value we stand on. Over the last few years of being a practicing teacher and through the GDE program, I have come to understand the importance of metamorphosizing in our roles as and how critical it is to question the way that we do things, the way that we see things, and the way that we are.
