You teach something once. You cannot follow it home to make sure it grows.
What you're looking at
A seed (the lesson, orange) held by a teacher's hand, planted downward into green soil (the child's mind). Roots extend into the soil where you cannot see them. A sprout grows upward, but small. Below, a red arrow of time stretches across the bottom — the part you cannot control or hurry.
Why I drew it this way
I rejected a tree with branches and leaves because that implies you see the outcome clearly. You do not. The soil is translucent green because I want you to feel the opacity — the child's mind is not a glass box. The teacher's hand is only at the top, not holding the seed all the way down, because the work of teaching is the planting, not the growing. The red time arrow at the bottom is separate from the plant because time is not part of the lesson; it is the thing you must wait through.
What it argues
Teaching is not engineering. You do not install knowledge and test it. You plant something and then you leave. The diagram argues through distance: the teacher is far from the soil, the roots are hidden, the sprout is small and alone. If I had drawn the teacher's hand still touching the plant, or drawn the soil transparent with visible roots, I would be lying about what teaching is.
What I left out
I left out the other thirty-one seeds. In my classroom, I plant thirty-two seeds every morning, and I do not know which ones are growing until years later, when a child comes back and says "Teacher, I still remember the moon diagram." I left them out because this diagram is about the single seed, the single lesson, and what you must accept about it: that you will never supervise its growth. You plant it and you go home.