Teaching Home Ec through Interpretive Dance

People make a lot of assumptions about other people's jobs, simply based on the job title and our own limited knowledge. Tell people that you're a "teacher" and you get some standard replies:

1. What do you teach? (Answer - children)
2. Oh, I wanted to be a teacher but...
3. Oh, I could never be a teacher because...

And then the assumptions begin.
From the Optometrist - Oh, I guess you do a lot of marking and work at your computer
From the education specialists - Oh, you should really teach this way (without asking if you do or don't)
From the trolls on the news websites (I'm not going further with that)
From the actual public... views on homework, detentions, teaching styles, subject topics and anything based on their own education 25+ years ago.

Teaching is acting. No matter what's going on off-stage, once those students enter the room, you're on-stage and you have to maintain their interest so that they don't start punching each other.

Normal Home Ec teachers demonstrate the recipe a day before a cooking lab and have students take notes. How did I end up teaching my recipes via interpretive dance? (Note to self: Adding music may improve student attention)

Doing the demos didn't help matters. Demo or not, they make the same mistakes, the injury rate is the same, the success rate is the same. I still have to run around showing each and every person how to do what I might have demonstrated, so I don't think the demos work for my students. Or me.

In both the new and old rooms, demos were hard to execute: the demo table is small, the mirror won't stay in position and moving the students and chairs from tables to demo just wasn't working. Some innovative teachers film themselves doing a demo when the room is empty, or from the safety of home. I have a deep-rooted loathing of being on camera, so that wasn't going to work.

I put my recipes on Powerpoint and added lots of photos. It was working. Before students were allowed to bring their cell phones to class. So, there are a lot of earbuds plugged into the ear away from the teacher's view. A lot of hiding phones and ongoing games under the table. And there's still a lot of good, old-fashioned arm wrestling and kicking each other under the table. Adolescents... what are you going to do?

So, the Powerpoints are now punctuated with Interpretive Dance. I wave my arms around. I gesture wildly. I bounce and spin, and demands answers from students who don't have their hands up. At the end of class, I'm tired. By the end of 4 classes, I'm exhausted.

And it's not even working. I swear, I'm going to add squirrels to the Powerpoints and glitter bombs to my performance. (Glitter bombs ARE a thing right? If not, I invented it. Right here, right now.)

Take "snickerdoodles". You combine the margarine, sugar and egg. Then add the remaining dry ingredients. Except the cinnamon and sugar. You put it in a little bowl and leave it alone. Leave it alone. LEAVE IT ALONE.

It's supposed to be sitting there waiting for you, so that you can roll your cookie balls around in it.

But sugar and cinnamon are both dry ingredients so they go with the flour and didn't we just use up all the sugar in the big bowl with the butter and we mixed our cinnamon into our sugar and it didn't look right so we threw it away, and now we need more sugar, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE FLOUR GOES IN THE COOKIES?

In fact, the only things they heard and remembered were when I said DO NOT DO THESE THINGS.

DO WE ADD WATER?
NO, YOU DO NOT ADD WATER. I SAID NO, NO WATER.

HE MESSED UP AND ADDED OUR CINNAMON ALREADY.

WE LIKE SMALL COOKIES. WE WON'T BURN THEM.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE FLOUR GOES IN THE COOKIES?

WHERE ARE THE DISH THINGIES?

WHERE DO THE WET DISH THINGIES GO?

IT'S HIS FAULT.

OOPS.

All the while my voice fluctuates - loud to carry across the room, medium loud to supervise 28 children trying to measure sugar or salt or one of those white baking things, extra calm for the child having a nervous breakdown and sotto voce for when I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I love cooking labs. Really. I do! Because after all the chaos and confusion, the kids walk away with a clean kitchen unit and something good to eat, and they did it "themselves".

But I'm still exhausted.
And what on earth would we do with the flour if we didn't put it in the cookies?

(Yeah, I know. They were going to sprinkle it lightly on top to make it pretty. They really don't know that's a thing for icing sugar, not flour. Also I thing I've told them NOT TO DO.)

Cookies without Tears

Our goal today: Cookies. Without crying.

Welcome to grade 7/8 Home Ec.

Our first of three cooking labs last week was an astounding collage of new things going wrong. Crying, for one. We don't get many tears in cooking labs. For that matter, I don't get many tears in Home Ec.

Our kitchen can accommodate 5 cooking groups. With class sizes pushing 30 that is, of course, 5 or 6 teenagers to a "unit" (um, "flexible" class space, so not typical Home Ec. kitchen units).

One way to track which groups who have started their lab is by watching ingredients disappear from the supply table. I'm usually at the supply table until the final group secures their goods, since measuring is difficult. If people start to ask for supplies that have run out, I know from my position that something has gone wrong.

If people complain that they don't have enough bowls or measuring cups, that's a sign that I need to break away from the supply table and investigate.

Well, they complained and I investigated. I had SIX groups, not FIVE... and group 2.B was in the midst of a custody battle over measuring cups. Group 2 was bewildered... they didn't know why the other girls split off, and really didn't know why they were taking the equipment with them. Group 2B still seems to think that they were doing what they were supposed to, and have no idea why it wasn't working out.

I'd already decided to work with one boy who no one seemed eager to include in their group, so I was committed to assisting him. Since I'm usually buzzing from group to group, assisting, no one seemed to notice the extra time spent with him, but they DID notice that his muffins looked a heckuva lot better than theirs. He had NO PROBLEM securing a peer group this time around ;-)

In the meantime, the crying started.

Poor bewildered, and now, overwhelmed groups 2 and 2B struggled with everything. They could NOT measure their ingredients properly and attempted to measure 40 or 50 ml of baking powder into their muffins (they needed 10. TEN.) Frankly, they were a little annoyed that I made them dump it out and try again.

They didn't have enough prep bowls to hold each measured ingredient. When I suggested - take your big mixing bowl and put all the dry ingredients together (you're going to combine them anyway) - I was told "I don't think we're allowed to do that".

Raising an eyebrow, I said - "And just who makes the rules in this class anyway?" (thinking she'd giggle and move on). The reply was... "Well, K....'s in charge of our group." Oh, for the love of ...!

There are 24 other young cooks to supervise, so I moved on. By the time I returned to the wayward groups 2, one child was crying, but still cooking. The class was nearly over. The group was nowhere near finished.

I had them contact their classroom teacher with an estimated ETA of 20 minutes late for the next class. The crying intensified, and the muffin peeking began. Every 30 seconds that child opened the door to test the muffins. Nothing could calm her down and her group was coming unravelled.

ANYway... they finished their muffins and I held off on the debrief for a few days.

Yesterday we had a class meeting to rebuild the groups and I clearly stated our goal for the next lab. Make cookies. Without crying. I coaxed a few giggles from my distressed student.

I greeted them at the door after lunch. "What's our goal?" (Not expecting anyone to give me a straight answer) They did - "To make cookies without crying!" (from groups who wouldn't cry if they dropped a hot cookie sheet on their foot). The other teachers think I exaggerate.

They're halfway there. We made the cookie dough. Tomorrow we bake the cookies. Oatmeal chocolate cookies - now, Tear-Free!