The Tutor & The Gardener – My Teaching Philosophy

The Analogy

I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between academic tutoring and gardening. My mind was blown when my mom (who is a gardening enthusiast) told me that the metal wire thing in the picture above is actually called a plant tutor. That’s when I knew I needed to write this article. The goal of this essay is to lay out my teaching philosophy through the analogy of the plant tutor.

First and foremost, the gardener can’t “make” the plant grow. All they can do is provide the proper environment for the plant to grow on its own. This optimal environment includes enough exposure to sunlight and water. The academic version of sunlight and water would be things like exposure to content that fall within the student’s zone of proximal development. Not enough water, the plant dries up and fails to actualize its potential. Not enough sunlight, the plant will eventually lose its colour and die. With too much water, the plant will drown. With too much sunlight, the plant will burn out. The same concept applies to students. The role of the gardener (teacher) is to “watch over” their plants to ensure that their exposure to water and sunlight is within a certain range that is unique to the plant. As a result, the gardener needs to pay close attention to the signs that the plant is emitting instead of projecting what they expect the plant to be. The bottom line is that tutors can “make” their students learn just as effectively as gardeners can force their plants to grow (not very well at all). Sure, they can plant the seeds and provide a proper learning environment, but at the end of the day, tutors need to practice patience and let their students photosynthesize (learn).

A plant tutor serves many purposes. The most obvious one is to provide support to a plant that cannot hold itself up naturally. To support the plant successfully, the tutor itself needs to be firmly planted in the soil. Furthermore, the tutor doesn’t move much, if at all, once fixed. It leads by example to provide a safe, stable, and unconditional structure that can be relied upon by the plant. It prevents the plant from falling too far off the straight and narrow path. Notice that the tutor is narrower at the bottom than it is at the top. Thus, the tutor provides more explicit support in the early stages of development when the foundation is being laid. Once the roots are set, the tutor can take a step back and let the plant follow its individuality all the while serving as a container of effective configurations.

When fruitful, the tutor can be removed when no longer needed. I would argue that this is one of the main goals of education. Teaching students how to learn in the 21st century is one of the most important skills to be contributing members of society and to lead a good life. Adding support once the plant is well-rooted is only stunting its growth. Helicopter tutoring is dangerous. Did you know that freeing a butterfly from its cocoon will often prevent them to fly? The struggle out of the cocoon is what ensures that the butterfly’s wings are strong enough to fly. With this in mind, the tutor ought to help only when necessary. It is the burden of the teacher to determine when the cost of helping a student outweighs the cost of letting them struggle. Apply the principle of least help. Like pinball flippers, only give the ball a nudge up when it is about to fall in the hole.

An additional role of the plant tutor and gardener is to guard and protect the plant against pests and diseases. Pests are analogous to external things that get in the way of education. A bad home environment, bad teachers, and bad influences are just a few examples of pests that slowly consume the student’s growth. The tutor and gardener limit some of these sources of destruction. By contrast, diseases are internal things that impede student learning. A common form of such a disease is the “fixed mindset” that was first studied by Carol Dweck. From experience, the “fixed mindset” epidemic is absolutely real when it comes to mathematics. It is considered normal to believe that some people are math people while the rest of the population are not despite the bulk of the evidence pointing in the other direction. It has been my observation that these diseases of the mind are difficult to shake off and have a significant impact on academic outcomes. The teacher can help students foster a growth mindset without being naive.

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• Millionaire Teacher – Book Notes
• Atomic Habits – Book Notes
• Three Questions for Success
• How To Read Research

Affiliate Links

1. Mindset – Carol Dweck
2. Grit – Angela Duckworth
3. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
4. Make It Stick – Peter C. Brown & Henry L. Roediger III
5. Take effective book notes – Readwise