Believe in Your Seed

Twenty-five years ago, she was a student in my 10th-grade English class in Kellogg, a small mining town in Idaho’s panhandle. Now, she is an educator herself  — an elementary teacher in the same large district where I teach high school English. And today, she stood in front 3000 employees of the Boise School District and delivered a keynote address.

Her speech was, to say the least, inspiring. It was expertly crafted — full of story, wit, insight, and charm. Her delivery was seamless, vivid, funny, and, quite frankly, better than any such talk I have heard in 31 years of opening meetings. (I say this as someone who is particularly passionate about public speaking. In fact, public speaking has become one of my greatest passions — both as a teacher who helps students craft presentations, and as someone who dreams of doing exactly what Sonia Galaviz did today.)

As she spoke, I experienced her speech on several levels. I was the veteran teacher inspired by a somewhat younger teacher. I was an educator from a small town watching her small-town student speak to one of the largest school districts in the state. (Go Wildcats!) And I was her teacher. I was someone who played some small part in her education a quarter century ago. When she finished and the crowd surged to their feet, I locked eyes with my brother who was standing 50 feet away. He, too, taught this young lady, and in our short look at one another I saw our mutual joy and pride — our awe at being part of this moment that no one else in this large building was experiencing in quite the same way. I didn’t even try to hold back my tears.

This was a believe-in-your-seed moment if ever there were one.

When my dad was in his late twenties, he planted his first garden. A week after planting those first seeds, he went out to check on their progress and, seeing no sign of green shoots, he began to gently dig in the ground, looking for evidence of growth. Then he heard the voice of his grandfather, Gus, who happened to live next door. “What are you doing, Burt?” Grandpa Gus asked. My father sheepishly explained his intentions, and then his grandfather said, “Burt, you’ve got to believe in your seed.” My father turned that lesson into a sermon that has lived on in my family for many decades. It is a reminder for all of us to believe that our work matters and that the seeds we sow into our students can have amazing results.

When I was the very young Miss Roberts teaching the even younger Sonia Galaviz, 400 miles and half a lifetime away, I could never have imagined a day such as this day. But that’s the point. The lovely and talented Sonia is nothing short of spectacular, and she surely makes this middle-aged teacher’s buttons burst with pride. And yet, she is only one of thousands of students who have passed through my doors. As Sonia herself reminded us today, it is our job to see each of our students. We must see them, and they must know that they have our compassionate notice. We must believe that the seeds we plant each year in these students will come to fruition in countless ways, most of which we will never see, and some of which will go far beyond our imagination. Just like Grandpa Gus said, we must believe in our seeds.