Public Speaking Isn't Just an Assignment Kids!

Anyone who reads this once in a while will notice that the "voice" in this is different, although the stories are familiar. I wrote this narrative as a presentation, and didn't quite find a balance between my writing voice and my presentation voice. It was fun, sharing my Home Ec misadventures with a new audience, however, and we all had a good laugh or two. The next day, my grade 8s made advanced quesadillas (which is regular quesadillas but with onion chopping, and other veggies). It was better than their attempt at Fruit Crumble.

Two years ago, I was teaching grades 6 and 7, when our Home Ec teacher approached me to talk about what Home Ec would look like when we moved into our new school. It would be “healthy living”, and there would be a garden and a dedicated space for recycling, and wouldn’t I like to teach that? We met with our principal and arranged to trade places.

Our New LEED Gold School - to be completed...

Early the next morning, I realized that I had just agreed to teach cooking and sewing to middle schoolers. I would now be in charge of a room full of pre-teens with knives. 

We haven’t moved into our new school yet, so there’s no garden, no recycling, and “healthy living” is disguised as Chocolate Quinoa Cake. I started blogging my Home Ec experience early in the year and realized that amidst the chaos, there was a great deal of learning, and that teaching Home Ec was really fun. 

Halfway through the first year, a grade 8 girl groaned loudly during class and said “Why do we have to learn all this farming stuff? What has this got to do with food?” And I knew had to make the connections more explicit.

I brought in a chicken incubator so that each term could hatch chicks. Only one or two students per class had ever seen chicks hatch. One child told me with complete confidence that “chicken” comes from cows. 

Once those eggs started to wiggle and chirp, the students were engaged. Looking after the chicks was a great springboard for learning about chickens and eggs, discussing factory farms, and talking about sex. How do chicken eggs get fertilized anyway? They thought it was similar to fish egg fertilization. A week after hatching, the chicks go back to the farm. These chickens are pets, not food, and we love them dearly.

My goal is to help my students start to understand the complex systems that bring them foods and textiles. Home Ec is an amazing blend of practical, applied skills and critical thinking. For the most part, though, I debunk urban legends.

 

Vegan Pancakes of Doom

They complained when I introduced a vegan recipe. One girl said she wasn’t allowed to drink soymilk because her dad said it was bad for girls and would stunt her growth. A boy mentioned that boys shouldn’t drink soymilk because it makes them less manly. They know all the bizarre stories about fast food outlets but didn’t know their strawberry fraps are coloured with ground up bugs (cochineal).

Children, meet your drinking water

We learned about Where Does it Come From and Where Does it Go, with a focus on water and waste in the first year, and agriculture in the second.

Using big satellite maps, the students struggled to find their place in the world, or rather, the Metro Vancouver area, placing themselves firmly in Stanley Park, high on a mountaintop, or in south Surrey instead of Port Coquitlam, conveniently located in the centre of the map. When challenged to find the source of their drinking water, many students indicated the ocean. Of 400 students, perhaps only a dozen have visited the Coquitlam watershed, and most of those think that the building is the watershed reservoir, not the lake.

I teach each cohort for 7 – 9 weeks, for 41 minutes a day, and in that term we squeeze in 4 cooking labs, a textiles project and as much food related news as I can. 

Who knew you could MAKE dishcloths? Cool!

Last year in textiles, they all learned to knit. I thought they’d be more tempted to learn if I offered them a “cool” project. Who knew that dishcloths were cool? They made mini dishcloths.

This year, they’re all hand sewing. The grade 6s and 7s are making phone cozies or stuffies and the grade 8s are making aboriginal-inspired buttons banners. The students are willing to try any challenge I throw at them and the results amaze me. Not their kitchen skills, so much, but their creativity, their persistence and their talent for asking me the hard questions and demanding serious answers.

Gingerbread Bunnies - Why Not?

As a middle school home ec teacher, I now teach 400 students a year, all between the ages of 11 and 14. My goal is to encourage them to become informed consumers who ask questions and demand answers about their food, their clothes, and the world in which they live. 

It's not summer vacation yet

Dear Grade 8s,

the weather today was warm and sunny, but not so hot and bright as to trick you into thinking that you're already on summer vacation. Please tell your brains to come back - you need them for another 6 weeks.

Yesterday, do you remember that I stood in front of you, brandishing a knife? You needed some important knife safety skills for today's cooking lab. I let some of you demonstrate how to safely walk with a knife - most of you enjoyed it, so I know you were paying some kind of attention.

Do you remember that I showed you how to peel an apple? And how to core a strawberry? I do, because I was so pleased that my berry cored so nicely... made me feel a little competent.

Do you remember the time we devoted to sorting out your cooking groups? That 7 arguing people cannot make a cooking group? You must sit in groups of 4 or 5. No? I didn't think so.

Today, you came in and watched, with small interest, and I rushed around, pulling out the ingredients for the Fruit Crumble cooking lab. As I deposited the last ingredient on the prep table, I asked you if you didn't think some aprons and maybe some clean hands might speed things up? All I got was a single keener at my elbow begging to be assistant chef. At least he was away yesterday and didn't know that today was a day of action.

If you're not going to listen to me, the least you could do is read the recipe that I gave you. This IS your third year of Home Ec., so these things must seem vaguely familiar. You know, that paper I keep throwing at you at the beginning of a lab? No? Didn't think so.

When the Unit Managers were finally roused to action, things looked better, for a brief, shining moment. And then, suddenly, there were 15 minutes left in the class, fruits were still being peeled at the point where they should have been simmered. Sinks remained empty and tables were full of dirty dishes. You wandered aimlessly from group to group for no apparent reason.

At the last few minutes of class, half of you had pulled it off. Kind of. Only 2 groups of 6 had followed the recipe. Another 2 had put the fruit and topping in a baking pan, but omitted the simmering step. The final 2 (and I mean final - they finished 15 minutes into the next class!) the final 2, hadn't prepared their topping and their fruit crumbles look like apples floating in pink vomit.

I think it will still work out. It's fruit mixed with flour and sugar. How bad can it be, really? I hope when I give you your self-assessments, you're honest enough to 'fess up to your mistakes.

And guess what? Next class, you're going to be assigned a seating plan. And you won't like it one bit. But perhaps your cooking will improve.