Well, I hope you all in the States had as a delightful Thanksgiving as Susan and I had. We had gone “over the river than through the woods to grand-daughter’s house” for a delightful and delicious Thanksgiving with my youngest son and his family in Nashville. For me, it was a particularly special time that eight weeks ago I thought I may never see again. But, see it again I did. As I hugged my son and daughter-in-law with a tear in my eye, as I held my grand-daughter with more than one tear, I knew once again that “ah” feeling that there are only two great and vital things: to live to see the great day that dawns and to live to see my world filled by the light of my family’s faces. It was a dramatic contrast to the two days before our departure. Those were two “ugh” days for Susan. She had come down with a bad, grumpy inducing head cold. Her irritability had increased when at the same time the inconsiderate heating and air conditioning system unexpectedly had to be replaced. Her crankiness went off the charts when the gas was turned off most of the very day she had scheduled to bake her renowned cheese cake for Thanksgiving dinner. She was not a happy camper.

To make her “grrrrrrr” mood less “grrrrrr-some,” Tuesday morning I secretly went out into the backyard. In the dim light of the gray dawn, assisted by a flashlight, I harvested some beauties from my rose garden with which to surprise her. As I carefully snipped here and there to gather a smile-inducing aromatic and elegantly colorful bouquet, I suddenly thought of how much my “bed of roses” has in common with teaching.

You do know that teaching is “a bed of roses,” don’t you? Well, it is. Of course, if you know anything about gardening, I’m turning the cliché “a bed of roses” on its roots to mean anything but trouble-free, easy, simple, effortless, and perfect. If you know anything about roses, they are high, very high, maintenance plants. And, they have thorns that prick, scratch, and draw blood. To make roses into an alluring “bed of roses” is complicated, challenging, time consuming, and occasionally bloody. That’s why they’re sometimes known as the “temperamental divas of the plant world.”

If you want to smell the sweet fragrances of roses and if you want to be dazzled by their beauty, you can’t take them for granted; and, you can’t just plop them in the ground and leave them alone to themselves. It’s just like being a true teacher. It takes a discipline of your spirit, your heart, and your soul. It requires a feeling of effortlessness in your efforts. It requires constant attention, engagement and involvement. It requires at times inconvenience and discomfort, at sometimes pain. Sometimes, if you want your heart to soar, to dive deeply into the miracle of life in the rose bed your arms and hands have to be cut by the thorns. That is, you’ve got to be prepared to work at it, you’ve got to want to work at it, and that work has to be a labor of love. It has to be a labor that feels like boundless joy and adventure. There can’t be anything laborious about all the time and effort it takes to deal with black spot, powdery mildew, canker, rust, and scale; to fight off aphids, slugs, thirips, caterpillars, midge, Japanese beetles, leafcutter bees, and spider mites; to dead head, prune, water, and feed. And, you have to do all that day after day after day, for each day is a new day when something new has to be done. Need I go on?

Now, I’ve helplessly watched some roses whither from whatever. But, you’ve got to be tough enough to win. You’ve got to be tough enough to take some adversity, make mistakes, and keep on without considering the possibility of losing. Trust me, you can allow all this challenging hassle to stop you in your tracks or to urge you on; you can allow it either to blemish your heart or to uplift your spirits; you can allow it to tire you or invigorate you; you can allow it to tarnish you with snarls or you can allow it to burnish you with smiles.

If you can meld the sublime with the mundane, if you can introduce melodic poetry into the bland prose, if you can ignite your heart with a burning ecstasy of faith, hope, and love, it will open the buds of your roses into magnificent blooms. No, you’ve got to tend intensely to these romantic rascals, just as with students, with all of your senses on alert each day as well as with the most careful and loving attention each requires and deserves. It’s that unconditional love, that unswerving faith, and that undying hope, that constant gritting it out, that are in the very essence of both gardening and teaching. They are that mysterious stirring in us that spur us on. They are the power that gives us the resolve to believe in each student while acknowledging her or his imperfections. They are the reservoirs of purpose and meaning from which we draw our strength, commitment, perseverance, and endurance. They are the magical triggers that set off the explosion of life

So, too, the classroom is a peerless, pleasurable, beautiful, aromatic, and dazzling bed of roses. But, you can’t only use your eyes and ears. Your eyes see only light; your ears hear only sound. It’s your listening heart perceives meaning and purpose. So, if you constantly tend to each student with all your senses, as well as with your heart and soul, if you let yourself be stirred by human emotion as well as by human intellect, , if you give to each of them with your empathy, you have a better chance of helping each student to awaken her or his too often dormant capacities, to move toward a wholeness that melds emotion and intellect and values, to see the light of her or his own being, and make her or his educational experience a journey of transformation.

The great truth of all this is that by loving each student unconditionally, by seeing in each student a shrine to creation, by lifting each student, you will rise and honor your own real self. Yeah, teaching is a “bed of roses.”

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Make it a good day.

      –Louis–