growing pains

I have a house plant – a coleus – I know it’s called a coleus because I looked it up. It was given to me by a class I used to teach; not because I was special in any way or because I was their favourite teacher, they gave one to most of their teachers. I expect they were using them to look at germination or something in science; then at the start of the summer holidays they gave them away.

I got to know the kids in this particular class pretty well over the course of the year. Not only did I have them for drama but I was also giving many of them extra support in reading or counting on a daily basis. Their literacy and numeracy ability levels were on the distinctly low side and it made school an extremely challenging and confusing place to be.

When they handed me the plant it was a little green thing with two leaves in a small yoghurt pot. And that is how it stayed for the next few weeks in my kitchen window. I have to say I was rather under-whelmed.

Then I was worried.

Surely, after three weeks of loving care it should have grown at least a little. I didn’t necessarily expect exotic colours and bounteous fruit – but was a third leaf too much to ask? I told my mother about it and she laughed.

A week after my mother removed the tiny plant from its yoghurt pot and replanted it into something bigger it doubled in size. Another week later it had over twenty leaves of varying shades of red and green, and had doubled in size again. When it started to block the light coming through the kitchen window I began to worry, but I had to admit that it was a thing of beauty.

It got me thinking about those kids who gave me the plant in the first place. The ones whose lives are being constrained by an inability to read or count. The metaphor is an obvious one. I wonder what would happen if, somehow, they were set free. Would they go on to become things of beauty? I have no doubt they will; somehow they will find a way around their problems and then who knows what they will be capable of - but I’ll be more than a little concerned if they start blocking the light coming through my kitchen window.