Cooking is a Little Bit Like Teaching (But Only Just a Little Bit)

Happy New Year! Welcome, 2014!

As I think about all of my teacher-friends who are getting ready to return to work for a new semester, I can’t help but be thankful for the break I have been enjoying. I now seriously believe that sabbaticals should be incorporated into K-12 education and not just reserved for college professors. 2012 and 2013 were full of sress for me: I planned a wedding, overcame undiagnosed health issues while teaching for a third year, and then got married and moved 1500 miles away from “home.” The last several months out of the classroom have been a time for me to explore my interests and passions outside of education, to learn new skills, and to be a good wife to my fantastic husband.

One thing I have had more time for is baking, which always intimidated me a little bit, but became even more time-consuming when I went gluten-free. When I was teaching, I hardly had the time to make dinner, let alone bake cookies and other treats. As I was working on my first batch of donuts for New Year’s Eve dessert, my teacher brain got to work contrasting cooking and teaching. I know it might seem weird, but since I am happiest when I am creating something, it makes sense to me to compare creating something in the kitchen with enlightening young minds.

Here are some comparisons made by my optimistic self:

• Cooking and teaching both require a lot of preparation. If you are missing something key, things just won’t turn out right. 

• Recipes usually turn out how I want depending on what I put into them. Sometimes I do everything right and it still doesn’t turn out as I expect it to.  The same can be said for student performance.

• In both the kitchen and the classroom, one learns best by doing.

Okay, so the optimism was short lived; here is my more cynical side:

• In cooking, formative assessment consists of licking the bowl, tasting the sauce, and nibbling at dinner to make seasoning adjustments. In teaching, formative assessment means endless tests and data analysis, which just are not as fun as eating raw cake batter. (For those of you who are not teachers, formative assessments are given throughout the learning process to track progress, whereas summative assessments are given at the end of a unit of learning.)

• In the kitchen, I can cook and bake whatever I want, whenever I want, and I can spend as much or as little time on it as I want. In most classrooms in this country, teachers are bound to curriculum maps and pacing guides that dictate what they can and cannot teach and when they have to teach it.

• If I am teaching someone how to cook something and it turns out badly, we laugh and order pizza. If the students I am teaching do poorly on their summative assessments, I get a bad rating and my job security and/or reputation could be jeopardized.

• At the end of a tough day, I can eat the cookies that I baked. I can’t eat the students who wear out my every last nerve.

• Dinner smells great while it is cooking. Not all classrooms, or students for that matter, have a pleasant aroma. I hated it when the boys had gym before coming to my class.

• Kitchen appliances, batters, doughs, soups, and roasts don’t talk back to me (yes, I talk to inanimate objects). Students talk back ALL THE TIME.

• The mixer doesn’t get distracted by a cell phone. Students can’t function without one.

Is it any wonder that I am less stressed out this year compared to last? I love teaching, don’t get me wrong, but taking a break has been so wonderful. All of the great "teacher-highs" that make the job so worth it only happen after the stress, frustrations, and hours of work that go into a successful lesson. Sometimes I miss it, but I am also happy in this stage of my life right now.

Here is a look at some of the other stress-free things I did in 2013:

I made this awesome mug for my Daddy's birthday. I am pretty jealous of him for having it.

I spent much of August and September painting these peg nativities to give as Christmas gifts. I kept this secret for a long time! In the background you can see the Christmas tree skirt I made.

I had so much fun making these super heroes and Christmas sets for a craft sale. My favorite is the Elf collection.

I made Christmas stockings for Drew and I. His is made out of an old shirt! I also made a festive banner and mistletoe.

I thought these little owls would look adorable on our garland. I was right! In 2013 I also made a turkey, a turtle, and two elephants!

This was so exciting - a family asked me to paint them onto pegs as a stocking stuffer! 

I had a lot of fun renewing my blogging efforts this year and I hope to keep it up in 2014! Thanks for reading and for your comments and feedback. May God bless you in the new year!

9/11 - From Student to Teacher

I was a freshman in high school, two days shy of fourteen years old, on 9/11/2001. It was probably the scariest day of my life so far and the memories of the fear and sadness I felt are permanently embedded in my heart, mind, and soul.

As a teacher for the past three years I had the great privilege and responsibility to teach my students about September 11^th each year. I looked forward to being able to share such a weighty historical moment with them. In my head, I was back in high school with my band teacher, bonding over tragedy, and I thought maybe I would have a similar moment with my students. I quickly realized, though, that this would not be the case.

A few days before September 11^th of my first year teaching I asked, “How old were you guys on 9/11?”

They thought for a moment and replied, “Second grade.”

Second grade. Only seven or eight years old. How many headline-news-events do you remember from that age? This would not be the lesson I played out in my head.

I began class on September 11^th with a simple question, “What do you remember from 9/11/2001?”

Students recalled being in class and their teachers turning on the televisions (in some schools) and watching, but being a little confused, as events unfolded. Students who lived closer to the attacks or who had family affected had stronger memories, but for most students in the small Florida town where I taught, 9/11 was an event that stuck in their minds, but they didn’t really understand it. After all, they were so young when it happened and their teachers and parents tried to shelter and protect them from the evil truth – that we were a terrorized nation. Later, I showed these students videos to give them a better idea of what actually happened that day, since that was what they wanted to know most, and then we learned about the memorials and new buildings being constructed to remember the attacks. The students then designed their own memorials and I think they felt a bit more connected to the history.

The second year, my students were even further removed from the events – they had only been in first grade. They were aware that bad things were happening on 9/11, but were even more sheltered than my students the year before. I felt like they were familiar with all the usual footage, so we watched a great documentary about a handful of the artifacts that have been donated to the Smithsonian and the people and stories behind them- a cell phone, part of a plane, a badge, and so on. I asked them, “If you could pick one object from your life on 9/11/2001 to tell your story from that day, what would it be?” Many of them mentioned the television, or an object from their classroom, or a comforting blanket or stuffed animal. Again, I think they felt more connected to history after this activity. I kept thinking, “They were so young. So innocent on that day.” My students wanted to hear my story, so I told them that I chose my clarinet, because I was in marching band class when I really learned what was going on. I stifled tears, and maybe I had that bonding moment I was hoping for.

Last year I was almost despairing over what my lesson would be. Those students were only in kindergarten on 9/11. For the third year in a row I asked, “What do you remember?” Almost nothing. I noticed that the younger the students were, the more their memories revolved around the adults in their lives and how the grown-ups acted. They mostly remember getting to go home early from school.

Over three years, responses evolved from, “I watched the news and I was scared because the planes were crashing and the buildings were falling,” to “I was scared but I didn’t really know why,” and finally, “I saw that the grown-ups were scared and it was confusing.” The thing that blows my mind the most is that there was only about an eight year age difference between me and my students. If I had been teaching this year, I bet those students would have recalled almost nothing.

It is frustrating from a teacher’s perspective, because the events of 9/11/2001 mean so much to me and I wish I could truly convey to my students what that day was like. At the same time, I am so grateful that they have had nothing to compare it to in their lifetime, yet I fearfully wonder what this generation’s “9/11” will be. Every age group has its defining historical moment, whether we like it or not.

So, on this day when Facebook statuses and news headlines proclaim, “Never Forget!” remember that there are young adults and children among us who don’t even know and will need us to teach them what happened and what that day was like, not just to rehash the same footage over and over again. They will need to the stories and the details in order to feel connected to the history. They will also need us to support them and to be there for them during their crisis, though I pray it never comes to that.