Weeding

Let me just start by saying I am in no way a gardener. I love flowers and think that they are beautiful, but I don't have much of a green thumb and would rather spend my time outside doing other things. But, this past September I bought a house and with a house comes gardening responsibilities. Early this spring my dad came and pulled out some very (read VERY) overgrown bushes and once they were gone my house was left looking a little bare. I planted a couple lilac bushes, a hydrangea, some bleeding hearts, and some other small bushes all of which are low maintenance.  The hydrangea was especially beautiful, if I do say so myself. In the front there was a lot of empty space so I bought some mulch to cover up the dirt, but got busy and still haven't had the chance to put all of it out. I was walking in my house the other day and saw that there was a whole bunch of other plants growing in the empty space. Those other plants are known as weeds. My beautiful garden needed to be weeded, so that's exactly what I did. I spent a good amount of time pulling out the weeds only to find that some of them came right back a couple days later. As I mentioned, I am not a gardener so I didn't realize that it was super important to get the entire root out of the ground or the weed would come right back.

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered." 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I started to weed the garden again, this time making sure to get the whole root, I started thinking.
This garden of mine was kind of like education. It needs to be nurtured by being watered and taken care of. There are lots of beautiful things in my garden, just like there are lots of beautiful people and things happening in education. But, just like any garden (or at least that's what I'm telling myself) there are some not so great things, some weeds. I kind of think weeds are a little misunderstood. In the gardening world they are viewed very negatively, but I think that they just want the opportunity to be beautiful too. Some weeds, like dandelions are actually even a little pretty. In my garden weeds will always be weeds, they will continue to spread if I don't get down to the root (of the problem). I think that in education there are some very negative things that are happening and I think it is our job to get to the root of these problems. We are lucky that weeds don't always have to be weeds in the garden of education we can work together as gardeners to help solve problems and make our garden beautiful.