Flowers and Weeds: Celebrating Successes and Acknowledging Areas of Growth

By Tom Sellevaag, Upper Grades Head

Spring is a season of reflection in the life of an educator and a season of preparation in the life of a gardener. And because I love a good metaphor, I couldn’t help but embrace Kathryn’s idea to use  “flowers and weeds” as a way to organize our reflections on the year that is steadily marching towards its conclusion. We recently posed two simple questions to our teachers: what are your greatest successes (flowers) this year? What are the parts from this year that you’d like to improve (weeds)? But as soon as I posed the questions, I had this realization: no one’s going to send me anything about weeds. Who wants to read about weeds, anyway? Flowers are much better subject matter—a triumph of careful cultivation, the realization of our hopes and dreams.

Sure enough, we came up with plenty of flowers. A more fully-realized Humanities program in both 5/6 and 7/8, with interdisciplinary work organized around essential/guiding questions. Strengthened discussion skills, with students more willing to listen actively, take risks, and commit to the notion of a community conversation (as opposed to a group of people each saying an idea to speak their mind). Extended collaborative explorations in Science focused on bath bombs, insulated beverage containers, and the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The first performance of the year in the revamped Upper Grades Drama program (Box, featuring our 6th Graders), and the upcoming 7/8 Arts Choice musical production of Annie, Jr. at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. The recently-concluded Upper Grade Spirit Week and the 7/8 Cohort Dance, both of which were almost totally organized by a group of 8th Graders. A strong admissions season that saw the Upper Grades program attract more interest than ever before.   

All of this blooming wouldn’t have happened without the unceasing, intentional care of the staff and parents in our community, as well as the fertile soil of our values and our traditions in which we have chosen to root ourselves. At this time of year, it’s worth pausing to survey the scene and appreciate the results of our collective effort.

But what about the weeds? 

Weeds are generally defined as plants that are growing where they aren’t  wanted. They can be invasive or merely a nuisance. They obscure visibility—literally, but also metaphorically (as when we are “in the weeds” with a challenging project). They are associated with something abnormal and unusual—whether you’re commenting on the green stalk randomly jutting out from a crack in the alley or remarking that the adolescent in your life is “growing like a weed” (which, even if the intended purpose is to express amazement and admiration, will surely have the effect of causing at least mild embarrassment).

But as some gardeners know, weeds get a bad rap. Some weeds are beautiful. Some are edible. Some can serve important purposes in their ecosystem. And some are merely ordinary, yet deemed problematic simply because they stand in the way of our plans for a nice golf course or a manicured backyard. In other words, weeds are all relative. And, contrary to my original way of thinking, weeds are not the opposite of flowers. 

For me at least, there’s a lesson or two here about self-reflection and self-assessment. Just as many of us would likely prefer to gaze admiringly on the lovely azaleas that blanket the DMV this time of year than the crabgrass that seems to sprout up everywhere, it’s a lot easier to appreciate and celebrate successes than it is to confront and acknowledge areas for growth.  It’s especially challenging to admit that a problem may be at least partially of our own creation, or that the weeds wouldn’t be such a big deal if we weren’t so focused on having the perfect backyard. Perhaps most difficult of all is finding the wisdom to see problems not as the opposite of successes, but as opportunities for insight and future growth.  

Just as we challenge our students to develop their self-reflection skills, we as a staff are committed to being reflective practitioners. So this spring, as we inch closer to the final month of the school year, we’re taking a hard look at our areas for growth, considering how we got where we are and where we might go next. How can we be more proactive about social-emotional learning? How can we assess and report on student understanding in ways that more closely align with our progressive values? How do we return field education to its place as a defining feature of our program after being hamstrung by health restrictions for parts of three school years?

Each of us will take stock of the year on an individual level, too. We will consider not only the flowers, but also the weeds that have sprung up: the complications that arose along the way; the moments when we had to veer from our plan; the good ideas that didn’t quite pan out as we’d hoped. In the process, we’ll note that some challenges were thrust upon us by outside forces, others arose as a result of ways that we chose to cultivate our professional garden, and still others are weeds whose origin is complex or mysterious.  

I confess that I’d never thought much about the idea that weeds can provide useful information about one’s soil, which in turn allows gardeners and farmers to make better decisions about how to manage their land to maximize the health and usefulness of the soil. Although I’ll never be mistaken for a gardener or a farmer, I appreciate the symbolism.  By reflecting thoughtfully on the parts of our practice where the thing that’s growing is not the thing we wanted, we can better understand the underlying factors and design for a different outcome in the future.   

So let’s not indiscriminately rip out the weeds. Instead, let’s think carefully about which of these unexpected developments are worth preserving because they serve a useful purpose in the classroom ecosystem, and which ones need to be cleared because they are invasive or poisonous. And let’s not forget to consider how the weeds got there in the first place, so that we can become better gardeners in the long run.

Then let’s make time to put our feet up, gaze admiringly at what we’ve created, and rest.