Year Six...Guinea pigging, can you dig it?

I’ve changed recipes and textiles projects frequently since I took this assignment and EVERY TIME I ask myself why I insist on this torture. Why can’t I just stick to something that works? But no, I always want new recipes, back up recipes, things that work better in my space, with my students. It’s great once we’re settled, but it’s really a painful way to start up the new year.

Today my first group of guinea pigs tested the breakfast burritos. We learned: Easy Breakfast Roll ups are not “easy”. That will be the “challenge” project. They may feel vindicated if I introduce them to the concept of “Pinterest Fails”.

I assured them that the Guinea Pigs class is promised a good mark, since I’m not marking the end result but the design and trouble-shooting process. Happily, that’s embedded in the new curriculum now, so I’m not just making stuff up (I may or may not make stuff up).

Pro Tip - search for "guinea pig chef" not "guinea pig cooking". 

The textiles project is still in flux, though. Every year, my senior classes have made a very specific sewing project, which I love. It’s a great skill builder project that the students really like. I’ve always had tremendous support from another department, and I made my booking back in May. I confirmed with my usual contact person that I wanted to expand my senior project to a school-wide project, but just once every three years.

With three weeks before textiles starts, I’m told – my contact  person is unavailable and I should probably look for a new project. Happily, we’re still working on a solution and I’m hoping the project can continue more or less as usual.

If I have to change projects, then crocheting has just been bumped up on the schedule.

Now I want to make crochet guinea pigs. 

Knife Safety - You're Doing it Wrong

As the new classes are invited to explore the home ec classroom with a scavenger hunt worksheet, I can usually anticipate and head off any problems. They have free rein to explore, under supervision, and there are relatively few monkeyshines.

The chef’s knives are sometimes removed to a more secure location, depending on the class. Sometimes it’s so secure, even the teacher doesn’t know where the knives are! I like to have a couple reliable helpers who know my best hiding spots, so if I forget, or have a teacher on call in class, cooking labs can proceed.

During kitchen orientation with one of the new classes, I asked two students to find the knives, one of the few items whose location is not labeled. I didn’t expect one child to grab up all the chef’s knives like a bouquet of flowers and then bestow them upon the students nearest him.

Within seconds, I had six children (eleven years old) brandishing knives like Samurai swords, blades up to their noses, gearing up to dart through their classmates. 

They were swiftly disarmed, which was something I had always wondered/worried about. Would I be able to disarm a knife-wielding child? Yes, apparently I can, but it helps when you take them by surprise. If I had to actually confront a larger or hostile child with a knife, it might not be so easy.

It might be time for some chain mail.

Rats!

I guess these troubles come to us all, eventually. You work with food, you’re gonna suffer the critters.

The previous Home Ec teacher here had it rough – I don’t know how often she started her day with a classroom festooned with urine trails, but anything more than “once” is too much.

When we moved into the new building, it was only a couple of weeks before the first rat sighting. Traps were placed, steps were taken and things settled down.

Several weeks ago, after a cold snap, a teacher came face to face with a rat in his classroom. I moved all food to the fridge or freezer. Traps were placed and things settled down.

Nope! About a week ago, my room and another showed clear signs of after hour rats. In my room, the rat tried to chew its way out from under the door, apparently running laps around the room when that got boring. I’m not sure how it got out. Did it get out?

Monday, one week later: I enter my room, glancing around for attackers as I enter the room. It smells a bit funky. Hmm. Maybe they cleaned with something different? Ugh. I open a window and the outside door to freshen things up.

Later: Still stinky. Smells like natural gas, something sulphur-y. Maybe they’re bleeding the gas lines nearby? That’s happened before. Email the boss. Check the outside air to decide which is worse. Outside smells pretty good! Open the door a little more.

While most of the room smells okay with the air blowing through, there’s an area that still packs a punch. Thirty kids all need my attention Right Now, This Minute, so it has to wait.

Lunchtime: Others have noticed the odd smell. I close the inside and outside doors and go upstairs for lunch. My head hurts. That’s not unusual, actually. Half an hour later, I’m back and my rowdy 7/8s are waiting to start class. I unlock the door and they tumble in. And immediately pour back out, noses buried in their shirts. Okay – time to get the boss.

The principal, the shop teacher and I fan out to locate the smell. The shop teacher finds it, just a moment before the principal would have… and I remove 30 slightly nauseous and skittish teenagers to another room. You know, at this point, some adult company would be nice. A strong drink would also be nice. "Starbucks Passion Tea"... where are you?

I debrief them. Yes, it was a rat. Yes, it’s dead. Yes, the caretaker is removing it. Yes, the room in being cleaned.

Now… we need to talk about our upcoming cooking lab! I clap my hands brightly, put on my best “teacher” voice and say – let’s talk about COOKIES! They groan. All of them. Food and rats do NOT belong in the same 40 minute block. I agree. But we have cookies to make.

The next two days involved a lot of cleaning and re-organizing, and a little paranoia. There’s never just ONE RAT, and I keep eyeing the suspected entry point(s) for beady little eyes bent on vengeance. 

p.s. a few days later, they did bleed the gas lines nearby. It was horrible. The fire department came for a visit.

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!

New Year; New School

Did you miss me? So much to write about, but no energy to write.  I missed you too.

My daughter says I have too much stuff. She may have said too much crap. I forget.

 She's right, though. But not all of this is mine. Honest.

New Year; new school! Earlier this month we moved into our brand-new school, so the Home Ec program needs a radical facelift. Botox! Stat!

Say “goodbye” to groups of students in mini-kitchens and look instead to one long kitchen. There are four sinks along the main wall (two more on the sides) and three ovens with two baking compartments. Additional workspace is in the form of mobile units.

How does it work? We’re still sorting it out. It will be a big help with the room is finished – finished. Missing shelves and drawers that don’t fit are cutting into our workspace more than you’d think. In a space like this, every cubic inch counts.

We’ve learned that you must be about 5’6” to use the microwaves. But you should be UNDER 5’5” to wash dishes without bonking your head on the cupboard and/or cupboard handles. But I did discover that it would be essential to keep one of our old microwaves on a counter for the smaller kids to use.

If I named the cabinets I'd call them "Ow" and "Not Again", or "Dammit!"

I’d thought that the mobile units would hold similar items as the old “fixed” units. That was Plan A. Plan B was to use one side for anything with a cord and mixing things on the shelf side. Electric grills don’t fit. Onto Plan C and D… I think I’m onto Plan G or H by now.

The units are named - Jamie, Gordon, Betty...

 Well, time and timetables won’t wait for me to hit on the perfect plan so, one week in, we picked up the pieces and set to explore our new space. I had the 8^th graders try a super easy recipe (fruit kabobs) with the condition that I wasn’t marking THEM, they were marking how I had arranged the ROOM. We learned a lot from the experience… they ran overtime on a lesson that was almost entirely putting fruit on a stick. At least there was chocolate. They looked awfully cute (and much younger) with their chocolate smeared mouths and twinkling eyes.

Fruit - the way Nature intended... Trust me on that

Prep and cleanup are tricky in the new linear space. It looks like we’re going to have to move the tables well out of the way in order to make room for 28 kids to work. The units confuse them. I noticed that they’d work on the surface of one unit, and help themselves to equipment from the next unit without even noticing.

Too many kids are trying to squeeze around five sinks to wash and dry dishes without enough counter space for two sets of drain-racks. It’s harder for the 8^th graders because they’re used to putting things away (more or less) in a set place in their own kitchen. Now, almost everything has to get put in a central location.

Again, though, it’s the clean up that really hard. Kids really hate drain-racks, for one thing. They hate to pull them out from under the sink. Hate to put a tray under them. But they really hate to put them away.  That much hasn’t changed between the old and new schools.

I’m still in the midst of labeling; the cupboards, drawers, mobiles…I'm hoping that clear identification will help make things more comprehensible. Of course, the kids need to read and comply with the labels...

I gave the mobile units chef’s names. The band teacher liked the idea so much he immediately had his music classes “name” all the music stands. I’m still undecided on names for my demo table and matching supply table (which now holds my entire sewing program)…

Everything Old is New Again - Year A rewind

My third year. I remember, through mercifully fuzzy memories, the fear of my first cooking labs... my first anything in Home Ec. All of the things I imagined could/might go wrong. Some of those things happened... nothing that couldn't be dealt with, though. There was the exploding oven door, the blender blowouts, the bloodshed... um. Yeah.

We're nearing the end of the 6/7 term. The grade 8s term goes for a few more weeks. I wish they synched up. It's so hard to keep a mental calendar going.

The grade 8s made POPCORN BALLS! Partly because one student has never really gotten over missing out on it two years ago. So, of course, one student in her group complained bitterly about NOT wanting to do it. We made them. Phooey on complainers!

Last time, popcorn balls was a 2 day lab. This time we did it in a single 41-minute block. Making popcorn on the stove-top would have been enough, really. They had a blast! Only one group burned their popcorn, and that was when they spilled it all over the burner and then watched it go up in smoke.

Melting the marshmallows was the hard part - they had the option to use the saucepan, or the microwave. Not one, but TWO groups used METAL bowls in the microwave!!! I wonder if it would help if I put signs on the microwaves indicating no metal? Or maybe the grade 8s should only do food preparation that doesn't involve any kind of "cooking" or preparation involving things with electricity.

The 6/7s are going to make quesadillas this week. Hopefully no nasty surprises there. The tricky parts are grating cheese and flipping the quesadillas, and they did quite well with the pancakes.

In textiles, the 6/7s are knitting, and doing very well! I have a few continental knitters, so I've had to learn that... although none of us can do a continental purl yet. Many of the students have learned not only to knit, but to purl, increase and decrease! There's a "math class polarization" going on - some are excelling, some aren't getting it at all, and there's very little middle ground. Just like math class. The determination is impressive though - I have some students stuck on the first row, and day after day they've been willing to go back and try again. I'm really impressed! Photos to follow!

The 8s are doing New and Improved button blanket banners! We kicked the bar up several notches with more detailed totems and different stitching and button criteria. The finished blankets will look great... the problem is... I don't think very many students will actually finish. It's just a bit too much for many and they're getting tired. We're at a very dangerous place where they're starting to resent the project, sewing in general and possibly me in particular. I don't want them to hate sewing. I want them to know a few basic stitches, be proud of their projects and be willing to consider Home Ec in high school. Or at least take away some basic skills. So, I'm re-thinking the project for next term. Or at least, the pacing of the project. Time to mix it up a bit and see if that helps change the energy in class.