September 2021 - June 2022
Explorations are allowed to teach from their own classrooms again and don't need to rent alpacas to trek through the school! Of course, the Pandemic isn't over, so things are still different.
Hand sanitizer is the new High Five. I've taken to greeting my inbound students at the door with a squirt of sanitizer along with Hi! Hey! Good morning! Nice mask! Before long, I'm cheerfully squirting any student who walks past me, most of whom paused, or doubled back to get their sanitizer. If they were holding hands with someone they get two squirts.
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| Of course, someone beat me to the punch line |
Since last year was all textiles, I decided that this year would be all foods and then the year after could (hopefully) bring us back into the balance that was familiar (to me... the kids won't know the difference). If the students had their way, they'd be cooking daily. I'd argue that I don't have enough recipes for that, but honestly, they'd make pancakes or quesadillas every day and be content.
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| They did suggest waffles. But the joke is for our former tech ed teacher. |
We made veggie plates with hummus, fruit skewers with melted chocolate, quesadillas, breakfast sandwiches, snickerdoodle cookies, chocolate chip cookies and pancakes. Pancakes are an excellent final exam. They should know: how to use a flat cooking surface, how to follow a recipe and measure and how to clean up. SHOULD. Many of them don't. That's how you earn your A, kiddo. Follow the recipe and clean up. You can do this!
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| Some clean. Some don't. I doubt their parents would be surprised. |
I heard whispers of students missing the Textiles Unit. This always surprises me, that they like textiles as much as Foods. Sometimes they like it better. I hated Junior High sewing. Guess that's why I don't teach "Junior High Sewing". So the final classes of the term had a surprise mini textiles unit. They were quite content rummaging through the felt and sewing small projects of their own design. It was a nice chance to see another part of their personality. Several begged for yarn, so that they could crochet.
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| Come to think of it, I think I had this student's baby sister this year... |
The chaotic highlights this year?
Eggs. You cannot leave an egg unguarded. They will jump into a hoodie pocket and run away. Some eggs refused to break neatly leaving the young cooks no choice but to take more, regardless that the other groups needed eggs too. It was hard to learn that eggs will roll off the counter if not supervised. Some groups needed to repeat the experience before finding a solution. Eggs are also hard to clean up. That's a good incentive to not letting them splatter all over the floor.
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| Not mine, but I do often draw faces on my eggs. I need some googly eyes though. |
Knives. Although it's probably not what you think. So many students used the paring knives UPSIDE DOWN. We did the knife safety lessons. They all had a chance to examine the knives and figure out which side is the cutting side. But every knife lab had several students get mixed up, pushing down on the blade, trying to force the spine through a cucumber.
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| At this rate, I'm going to have to drop them down to toddler knives. |
Recipe Adaptations. Changing a recipe for a student with allergies isn't a problem. Sometimes you get a cluster of incompatible dietary issues and things get difficult. A soy allergy - read the labels on EVERYTHING. More vegans that usual, but that led to some great alternatives that worked well. Just Egg, is poorly named for a plant based egg but it cooks up like scrambled eggs. I didn't like it as much for cookies but the flax egg was even better than egg. Almond milk was the vegan's preferred dairy substitute and we didn't conflict with any almond allergies, but it did require diligent cross-referencing.
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| Bad name, good product. Smells pretty funky when past its date though. |
Trusting the students to self report their allergies was less successful this year. One student looked at the kiwi fruit in the second lab and reported that they were allergic to it. Was that on the allergy form? No. I need to find a better way. Maybe next year, I'll email all the parents for allergy information.
Going gluten free is hard to do when baking, as I'm certain any reader with Celiac Disease will inform me. Yes, there are substitutes and they're getting better all the time, but sometimes, they just don't work and I need better recipes for those labs. It would help though, if we didn't add two extra eggs to the dough because "it looked dry".
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| Well, if it happens to other people, there must be a solution, right? |
In a lot of ways, this year was tougher than previous years. My grade 8s may or may not have taken Foods with me. Some of the 8s missed out on Home Ec when we moved to online learning back when they were in sixth grade. None of the 7s had worked in my classroom, or taken a Foods class. And of course, the sixes, coming from elementary school, were new to the whole Middle School Experience.
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| Accurate. |
Next year? Well, the seventh and eighth graders will return with some experience in my class. The sixes will start from zero, but generally are good listeners and eager to please. I'm returning to my mixed Foods and Textiles model and hope to do a series of mini labs to keep the students in the kitchens and active learning more often. They love to cut things to a fine mince. This doesn't work well for veggie plates, but it could work well for making salsa. I intend to do a short unit with textiles... a project I've overseen before and feel comfortable with. I can make it more challenging. I can make it super easy. On paper, the plan looks great! But I only have temporary amnesia from the past school year. I know that anything that can go wrong, will. And it will bring friends.
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| I really want this to work, though. |
