She used a metaphor I could easily relate to. Find a marigold; avoid the walnut trees. I understood exactly what she meant with the analogy. Marigolds are wonderful companion plants. I have them in my garden this year alongside the tomatoes, peppers and other plants. They help keep the rabbits away as well as many garden pests and they also help the vegetables grow larger and stronger just by being nearby. Walnut trees on the other hand give off exotoxins. Nothing grows or prospers around the walnut trees in our yard. They stand alone, poisoning the vegetation around them until nothing exists beneath.
She was referring to choosing a mentor, and the analogy is one of the best I have read. It makes exact sense. Find a colleague who will not only help keep the problems and negativity away, but will also help you grow and strengthen as a teacher. Avoid those professionals who are already burned out, who want to bring you down and discourage you instead of lifting you up.
Finding my “marigold mentor,” however, hasn’t been easy. Sure, I have teachers around me who are full of positivity and are continuing to grow as a professional, but their lives are already quite busy and they aren’t necessarily able to help me navigate my own professional journey. I also know who the walnut trees are and while I try to avoid those, sometimes proximity and administrative decisions make it hard to avoid those staff members. While I realize we have to work with the walnut trees, I know they aren’t the ones who will help pull me back into the profession I am disenfranchised with right now.
To find the right mentor, it turns out, I just had to sow better seeds. I’ve been struggling with the teaching profession for the past four or five years, but I only got vocal about it in the past year. I had privately been struggling and privately been frustrated and privately been searching for next steps and options out. This year I chose to speak. I decided I was preventing myself from finding solutions by not using my voice and I started to advocate for myself. In short, I started talking with anyone who would listen. I told them about my frustrations and my need for something new. I shared with them my talents, ideas and thoughts and I listened as they gave advice and pointed in various directions and suggested people and places to connect with. I took copious notes, made numerous follow-ups and took joy in the fact that I had new ideas, new perspectives, new suggestions to work with.
And out of these conversations, a marigold emerged. I’m not even sure that he realizes he is my marigold, but he voluntarily stepped up and into my professional journey not just once, but again and again to help guide me. He has given me direction, suggestions, insight, feedback, support, encouragement and hope. He has given me hope. Pandora herself couldn’t grasp how priceless hope has been to me after this last year.
In my fourteen years in the teaching profession, I have worked for seven principals, four curriculum directors and five superintendents. I have never had any one of those administrators initiate connection with me like my current curriculum director has. His job title has nothing to do with mentoring staff and his duties are plentiful and time-consuming enough to prevent him from having the time to even do so, and yet, here he is, sitting in my classroom, mentoring me. He knows as well as any good educator that curriculum isn’t what drives student achievement; it’s a tool, certainly, but it’s good teachers using good practices and methods that make the difference. After one initial conversation where I explained my struggles, he has taken the opportunity on several occasions to follow-up with me with ideas and thoughts and encouragement. Where other administrators have responded to my conversations with, “Let me know if you need a letter of recommendation,” (essentially encouraging me to leave my position) this marigold has come back to me time and again to help me find reasons to stay and to flourish where I am, and to begin to see that my next steps might not be outside the teaching profession but within.
While I am blessed beyond words to have Corey as my “marigold mentor,” his impact reaches far beyond just my professional journey. It goes well beyond just our district and the people within it. The fruits of his labors are spread far and wide and I am ever so grateful to be within that realm. We will all prosper and grow stronger with such leadership among us. He has a vision for our district that brings hope to not only the frustrated staff but to the frustrated student body as well. He has his finger firmly on the pulse of education and is using his position to help steer education towards better practices, better models, better outcomes by way of better teaching.
To say the past 18 months of education has been like the opening of Pandora’s box is as apt a metaphor as the marigold and walnut tree concept. All the chaos, mayhem and less-than-ideal teaching practices have made many professionals in the field question their place and their future within education. The pandemic months have made many students choose staying home and learning virtually over connecting with peers and adults at school. But with people like my curriculum director leading the charge, we can begin to put all that chaos and mayhem back into the box and firmly close the lid. Together, we can give each other hope, and that hope can lead us forward in meaningful, life-changing, positive ways. My hope is that we all find a marigold as dedicated, empathetic and involved as Corey.
Teaching at 3am 