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.)