Pot in Schools
Now That Should Get Their Attention
Over the years I’ve realized that a large part of my role as a teacher is not just to convey information to my students, but to teach them how they should learn it. After all, knowledge can be gotten easily enough at a public library. Well-known statistics ensure us that we retain only a fraction of what we’re taught in school, yet only a fool would argue that education isn’t important. So what is it exactly that we’re gaining from all those years of hard work? One possible answer is that, if we go to a good school, we’re not taught just what to learn but how to learn it. We’re not just given material, we were given ways of mastering it.
I now dedicate a large amount of class time to teaching my students how to do the work of learning. And one principle I tend to harp on is that, if you have a large list of tasks on your to-do list, you should start with the quickest and easiest one. Doing so will boost your confidence and clarify your mind because it decreases the overall number of things you need to think about. Your efforts become more and more concentrated as the list narrows, and that satisfaction often leads to more productivity. There are lots of names for this methodology but, in my classroom, I tend to call it the “low-hanging fruit approach.”
Yet it’s the curse of the teacher to live in a constant state of hypocrisy. When you spend a large portion of your time giving instructions, it can be perilously easy to spend too little of it following your own advice. And, naturally, though I talk about low-hanging fruit in my classes at least once a week, I’ve generally failed to apply this idea to the Classical Roots Program. This spring, I woke up from my negligence and started asking better questions. Questions like “What would be some of the easiest quality-of-life improvements we could make to the school grounds?” and “What would cost our program very little but make a big impact?” it wasn’t long before an answer came to me: pots.
Potted outdoor plants are a mainstay of our garden at home. Though we’re lucky enough to have a spacious back yard with sizeable borders and even a few seasoned fruit trees, each Saturday in April and May I spend hours dragging terra cotta pots of every conceivable size out of our shed and potting up seasonal displays. Starting with bulbs like daffodils and tulips in April, I gradually move on to a mixture of annuals and long-flowering perennials for summer, then classics like mums and dusty miller in autumn, and finally cut greens, dogwood stems, and ivy in December. Placed on porches or front steps, pots like these, especially when they’re large and numerous, have a way of linking the indoors with the outdoors, of creating a pleasing sense of connection between the divided zones in which we live, of inviting us outward, first by drawing our eyes out the window, then by coaxing us through the door.
Over the years, several groups of parents have donated money and time to install similar potted displays at CCA’s various entrances. It’s a noble, selfless thing to do. But the thing about pots is that, given their limited amount of soil and the warmer temperature of their environment above ground, they need very frequent watering if it’s warm out. And even the most dedicated CCA parent can’t be lugging a watering can around campus every single morning in August. Therefore, I asked if Classical Roots could be allowed to take charge of the potted displays from now on. I was graciously given permission and promptly ordered around thirty pots of various sizes.
While these shipped, I decided to make an experiment at our USLR entrance with some of the larger pots we already had on hand in storage. Dividing a few salvias from my home garden and purchasing a dozen or so annuals for a song at Home Depot, I had the displays set up within an hour or two. The result is a surprisingly substantial addition to the experience of walking into school. Since potted plants require a lot of care, they send an implicit message of intentionality. Set near an entrance, they’re a living and breathing sign of welcome.
We plan to rotate these displays seasonally throughout each year, mixing annuals with perennials and moving the perennials to permanent homes in the school’s gardens as each generation of plantings is switched out. It’s a method I’ve long used at home that provides the added benefits of reducing waste and gradually beautifying your borders. Of course, the insects and birds will be pleased too, since the flowers are being selected with their needs partly in mind.
By taking care of creation, we take care of ourselves, because stewardship is in our nature. These displays, which you'll see popping up at each entrance of the school over the next few weeks, are one expression of this generous duality, a kind of welcome that gratifies both the giver and the given. They’re proof that low-hanging fruit can be sweet indeed.
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