Briefly after the School purchased the land for the new campus, I brought some of our leadership team out to look at the land and to see if it was real. I recall Mr. Large, our elementary principal, standing by a tree and asking if we were really going to build a school here and where would the playground be? As we were walking through the fields, I had this crazy idea of picking up some dirt, a way to viscerally feel that we were going to build a school here. So, while looking down for a spot, I found an artifact in the thick grass that I have kept as a reminder of where we come and what we are as teachers: a machete.
I am not sure what that machete was used for. Was it to cut down sugar cane at one time? It looked like it had been here a while. Was it for cut high grass in preparation for planting? I am not sure of its story. But I like to think that this was a tool for farming, as I know that the greenfield at Hacienda Espinal was used for such purpose at one time, and, perhaps, it could symbolize the beginning of the something we are planting and will grow at our new campus.
As Earth Day approached that week, I was re-focused on the metaphor “teacher as farmer” and the machete reminded me of it.
I think teacher as farmer is a more accurate image than teacher as sage, preacher, supplier, guide, coach, or mentor. This idea is not my own and it is being re-established by progressive educators and students; however, it is the essence of what U.S. educator John Dewey taught us more than 100 years ago.
So, what does a good farmer do?
– She creates the conditions of optimal growth.
-He sets out a fence line, the boundary within which nurtured growth can best take place.
-She breaks some of the most intractable hard dirt to allow seeds the space to take root.
-He digs a few really big rocks out of the field.
And then the job of the farmer is twofold:
-to provide nutrients to the growing plants and
-to do some judicious pruning and weeding.
That’s it. The plants, then, do the rest. I think if we, as educators and adults invested in children’s learning, take time each day to create the conditions as a farmer and not give our children the knowledge as a sage or supplier, our students will “grow” stronger, happier, more productively, and better prepared for their futures.
This is hard for our current generation of teachers and parents, myself included; we place our value in our role as the source of knowledge- we are the sun, we are the rain. We have to let go that image; knowledge exists irrespective of the teacher, and the more we empower, allow, permit, even “force” students to take ownership and responsibility for their learning, the better prepared they will be for the future that awaits them. When adults ask the questions, we fail our students.
Our mission tells the community that we will inspire a passion for learning….why is that important to us? Because a child’s, or a student’s, ownership of the learning process is critical to a sustained learning experience, for mastery, and for a student to own that learning, they must be inspired (good nutrients). This is an uncomfortable transition for all of us who grew up in classrooms with hero-teachers who led us to find strength and wonder in knowledge. But we have to stop leading our students to knowledge and start teaching them how to find it within a fertile field. The world has changed and we are not the sole keepers of knowledge anymore.
With vision and planning, this is how a new campus might help create conditions for optimal growth, to create the space for students to become what we believe they can be and for us as the adults to help with those conditions to care.
I fully believe in what a student speaker said during our groundbreaking ceremony, that great schools, great communities are built on the shoulders of others, those present and those who have come and gone. Incredible yield, success crops come from years of thoughtful planning, and from mistakes, not just the perfect seed or the placement of the plow or the dirt that particular year . The new campus is being designed and built by watching and listening to students and teachers and by the mistakes we all make. We are always finding out what works and what does not. We have seen for many years that learning happens outside of the classroom into the hallways and the walkways at schools. We watched students choose the right place for a clarinet lesson to sound right and shift where we perform to sound incredible. We have watched students in the high school forum gather as a community, we have watched humility and life lessons in Billy and Friends. In how we choose to eat all around campus, how you plant gardens in every way, how our teachers change or tweak classrooms around almost daily to meet the needs of the students, how we meet in small groups facing each other, sharing curriculum or personal stories. How our whole campus welcomes every type of community member all day and does not shut down just for students. These are the lessons that went into our design and what is being built for a new campus.
Our goal is to prepare students to be leaders for the dynamic, the ambiguous, the exciting future that lies ahead. To create the conditions in which our students will grow. We need to be “educators as farmers”. The moment we have now, the reason we invest in children, why we choose our profession and want to work in schools, is to see what the future might be. In building our new campus on those fields, by choosing to till, to plant, to build, to rethink, wonder, and act, we are committing to a new space that will serve students for the next fifty years.
Building Cairns 