I usually skim through the introductions of books, but I found myself reading the intro for Michelle Collay's "Everyday Teacher Leadership" and a few metaphors really stood out to me. She argues that teachers are leaders, especially when we engage in learning with other educators. Please enjoy these excerpts from her book:
"We are sometimes gardeners who have accepted a plot of land to care for when we didn't choose the seeds. Within our classrooms, we recognize the gifts and challenges our students bring, and we nuture those seeds into more fully developed plants. We till the soil, water the seedlings, and struggle to resist pulling the weeds. We strive to see the space as a garden filled with plants of which we don't yet know the names. The ground may lack certain nutrients or the right conditions for all the plants that come up, but our task is to keep all of them alive, not just those that are best adapted to the conditions.
Other times we are mechanics, often without the right tools to repair the systems in which we and our students live and work. We tinker with the machinery while knowing the machine is not designed to do the job. We borrow tools from our neighbors to make the short-term repair in hopes the machine can continue to function, even as we recognize its limitations. We walk away from this broken machine in frustration, only to return the next day because that's the only machine we have. There are few other forms of education for most working-class and poor students. We educators have chose to work with all students, taking responsibility to do our best with the materials and resources we have. Accepting this role is an act of leadership."
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