Tilling the Ground in Education
Last week I started a discussion as an outgrowth of having discovered a hidden garden in downtown Vicksburg. In the blog entry, I described the joy of finding somewhere that someone was doing something productive in an unexpected way; using abandoned or unaccounted for resources as a way to bring something good into the world. And I asked for more examples. Almost as soon as I hit "Publish," I received an email response from Sutton Ruiz, a good friend of mine from New Orleans: Teachers who take students with learning differences or emotional issues and help them thrive! Yes. That is exactly what I am talking about. I followed up with Sutton, because she is right. There is something amazing about education in general. But the act of finding a child who is challenging, and cultivating them to success, well that borders on the mystical. Those educators - the teachers like Sutton - who do that kind of careful work don't always see the...