The Reluctant Gardener

            If you had asked me when I was twelve-- or twenty-seven-- that I would end up aching to garden I would have said you were nuts.  Whenever I saw my mom bent over in the yard pulling weeds I thought it looked like the most abysmal waste of time.  It seemed monotonous and boring and I couldn’t imagine anything worse on a temperate spring day than being outside in the fresh air, listening to the birds and mucking about in the dirt.  Lame-o. 

            Now I’m like a cranky addict if I don’t get to my garden.  With each passing day that my weeds—yes, they’re mine, though not affectionately called so-- get shelved in favor of more pressing duties, the low grade nagging turns into a deep yearning.  I actually want to get out there.  I want to put on my sloppy painting clothes, knot my hair under a straw hat and head out to where no one knows I’m coming and but every body knows my name.  In my garden, no one talks, especially the flowers.  They have no personalities or names, no wants or needs except for moisture and sun.  They’re like beautiful models in clothing catalogues, there to momentarily raise the aesthetic level of my world but make no demands on my psyche. 

            Sometimes I, however, talk to them.  It’s a very one-sided relationship that I allow because I saw a PBS special once in the late eighties that said that plants do better if they’re talked to and who am I to refute science?  They were wearing white lab coats, so it must be true.  Now I praise the climbers for continuing along as I trained them and I admonish the sedge for coming back even though I’ve made it absolutely transparent that I want nothing more to do with it.  Like a tenacious romantic-comedy Hollywood boyfriend that I’ve broken up with repeatedly, Sedge keeps coming back, like it or not, uninvited to laze about and make no worthwhile contribution of any import to my life.  More trouble that he’s worth, yes, but at least he doesn’t speak.   He can’t criticize me for the clover all over, the strawberry plant that’s gone wild, or the honeysuckle that’s out for world domination.

            I head out to the backyard with quiet resignation in my heart and a bounce in my step.  I spend hours pulling up the weeds and yanking out my demons.  Gardening as a meditation on patience, growth and acceptance.  It feels good to get dirty, to envision my yard’s future in its lush richness and nestle annuals into their new homes.  No wonder my mom was always gardening.  It got her away from the children where she could retreat into her mind and thoughts of calmer weekends and people who actually appreciated what she cooked for dinner and told her so to her face. 

            Recently, I pointed to a flower along the side of the road and asked my mom for its name.  “Heck if I know,” was her answer.  I said, “I thought you knew the names of all the flowers.”  “Goodness, no,” she said, “I know the names of like six things and that’s about it.  Could never remember the rest.”  “But I thought you were such a big gardener.”  “No, not really,” she said, “Your father did most of the gardening.  I mostly weeded.  But I found it pretty boring to be honest.”  This was news to me.  “You did?  I thought you couldn’t wait to get out there, get your hands dirty, enjoy the meditative calmness of repetitive, you know, weed-pulling.”  Mom took another drag on her cigarette and said, “I would have rather been reading.”  I smirked.  “One of your trashy murder-mysteries?”  I said.  She nodded.  I thought about this for a moment.  All this time I thought she was such a gardener, but in actuality, she was a reluctant gardener.  “Oh,” was all I said.  Then, “If you weren’t so crazy about it, how come you didn’t make us help you?  It would have gone so much faster and we would have kept you company.”  “Because when we were kids, your father and I had so many chores on the weekends that we decided we wanted you to have more fun than we did, so we let you run around the neighborhood and play with your friends.”  “Oh,” I said.  Then, I added, “Thanks.”  She put out her cigarette and said, “You’re welcome.”

            Today, my son gets home from school in an hour.  I would love to have him help me in the garden.  It’d be a great education for him and such a nice mother/son bonding experience for us.  He can yank and dig and get as dirty as he pleases and I can teach him the names of all the plants and flowers I’ve learned—boasting many more than six and still counting.  We can talk about color and composition and he can help me decide where to put the annuals.  Not to mention, I’d love to have the company.  My son would much rather be reading. 

           

           

The New Old Math

            Math and I are formidable foes and I have written about our rocky relationship before.  But there’s a new twist to the story of late-- one I think you’ll enjoy.  For those of you who’ve been following along, I’m in graduate school to get a masters degree in teaching elementary education.  I mention it because the class I took this semester was in how to teach young children math with Cognitively Guided Instruction or intuitively—in other words: letting the child solve the problem the way he or she instinctively wants to.  “Intuitively?!” you exclaim.  Yes, you heard right.  The entire gist of the class and the bedrock of the two textbooks we worked from was this: allow kids to arrive at the answer the way in which their brains naturally get them there.  “What!?!” I hear you blathering, “but that’s the opposite of how I learned math as a child!  I spent hours learning logarithms that made no sense and buckled under the weight of wrote memorization drills.  I remember fear, anxiety and being told I was doing it wrong as if it were only yesterday.”  I know, pal.  You and me both.  Calm, down, you’re sweating a little.  Are you okay?

            The idea is that children show up the first day of kindergarten with a robust brain full of informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics—just ask any four year old what to do with one cookie when his sister is sitting next to him in the back seat of the car.  Break it in half.  That’s intuitive problem solving.  That’s math.  Over the years, addition, subtraction and multiplication become organic extensions of what little kids already know, and they know a lot.  Then, with any luck, your young child will get a teacher who has been taught that creating a positive attitude about math is not only important but germane to her bright future.  No more fear—a lot less shame.

            Imagine a teacher who is actually paying attention to how your child is thinking not just what he’s thinking.  Imagine a classroom where as much time is spent discussing wrong answers to fraction problems as correct answers.  Imagine a pedagogic ethos wherein children are not only taught to learn from their mistakes but actually come to understand mathematical concepts by exploring mistakes, locating the exact spot where her brain jogged left when it should have jogged right, then letting the child enjoy the excitement of an ‘aha!’ moment, where she notices what she did wrong herself.  That’s right, folks, in this math utopia, the teacher doesn’t publically tell her her answer is wrong, the student locates the problem-- perhaps in concert with a peer partner or group-- then fixes it.  Together.  I know.  It sounds crazy to me, too.  But it’s amazing.  And it works. 

            If children learn early math concepts they way that makes most sense to them—by counting on fingers, drawing pictures, talking out loud, or moving legos, pretzels or ‘manipulatives’ around in groups on a desk or rug, they’re more likely to get it.  And if they can help each other and arrive at the answer by reasonable group discourse, (the way adults do in many, many career fields) then maybe the harsh competitiveness of math will be removed long enough for your child to actually feel free to fail and therefore learn.  And don’t worry-- if you think they’ll be counting on their fingers forever, they won’t be.  It’ll take too much time and they’ll become impatient and eventually a classmate will show them how to skip-count by tens or multiply instead of add and they’ll happily jump on that bandwagon.  Who wouldn’t?  It’s our nature to embrace the shortcut-- to evolve and improve. 

            Once the basics are embedded, children are encouraged to see oncoming new math strategies as compatible layers to an involved and fascinating game-- the way they learn the rules for Pokemon trading card duels or professional baseball line-up strategies.  They’re much more likely to remember the algorithms—those slippery rules and strategies-- because they’ll make sense.  If children can approach an algebra problem the way they approach a video game, with curiosity, gumption and the resolve to keep going until they find the gold coins or the trap door or the answer for what x stands for—just imagine!  Imagine not feeling shame when you get the answer wrong, or not comparing yourself to the kid who always seems to know what’s going on when you don’t.  I know, easier said than done.  If only. 

            But it’s going to get better because more and more teachers are going to allow your child’s mind to follow its own path to the answers.  Math will become more like building a snow fort with your friends.  I’ll do it my way and you do it your way and we’ll all meet in the middle.  And if there’s a weak spot, we’ll find it together, and work through to improve it, with persistence and resolve-- as a team of learners.  As a mighty force for mathematics good. 

(Author’s note: Download: “The Kindergarten Files” on iTunes for shining examples of this exciting revolution in learning or read Thomas P. Carpenter et al.’s “Children’s Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction, 1999)