What You Feed is What You Grow
When you grow up in the southern United States, you grow up around food. It’s how we create community and build fellowship. The culture is figuratively and literally rooted in the soil (or red clay as the case may be for some of us), and those of us of a certain age learned the seasons based on what was on the table.
At its most functional level, food helps sustain us. We need it multiple times a day across our entire lives, and if you have ever been in charge of toddlers or teenagers, you can double or triple how much is needed! The food (along with water) provides nutrients and vitamins so we can go on about our daily stuff and not pass out.
When we were raised in the summer sun and with fresh gardens, our bodies grew to be strong and healthy across the days and weeks. The two are tightly connected: food and growth.
In this back to school season, ERG invites you to reflect on what you are growing. Many of us talk about wanting to grow communities of respect, empower students to be their best selves, and ultimately prepare children for the world beyond school.
In order to grow these things, what do we need?
Well, we need food.
For respect, we must begin with how we treat each other.
How does this look and sound in faculty meetings, the cafeteria, the front office? How does this look in the “meetings after the meetings” and on social media? Unfortunately using social media as a platform to complain about your particular professional circumstance has implications not only for your students, colleagues, and parents, but also casts a shadow of disrespect for the profession as a whole.
For empowerment, we need to practice empowering ourselves.
How do we take initiatives, lead in our contexts, and model behavior that shows students how to function even when things are not fair? Because a lot of times in life things won’t be fair. We cannot choose the circumstances, but we can choose how we react to them.
For life prep, how are we tending to our own lives?
Have we let our health go, our workspaces pile up, or inadvertently stay busy but get absolutely nothing done? Are you going through your days reacting rather than being intentional? The cycle can stop, but not without intentional decision making.
It’s really hard to grow a garden when the weeds are choking the good stuff. It’s also really hard to grow and become healthy when toxic behaviors are getting in the way.
And the thing is, there is a lot of good stuff. Our schools are full of amazingly talented people who care and nurture children in one of the most difficult jobs EVER.
But the talent can get choked out if we aren’t careful. Instead of growing fear and anxiety across our schools that ultimately is felt by students, we must eliminate the toxic stuff. Multiple times a day across the weeks and years. If any of this resonates with you, think about one thing you could stop doing.
Not start.
Stop.
Take one thing away and consider what your garden will look like in a month. Two months. Six months. Would you be any closer to respect, empowerment, or victorious life-prep yourself? We cannot possibly teach these things to our students unless we begin with ourselves. Yes – it could be a long and hard journey. Or maybe it could be something very simple.
Success breeds success. In order to move along this continuum, you must be gentle with yourself, but honest. Start with one small thing and become vigilant about what you are growing this year.
What you feed is what you grow.