Recently, a dear friend of mine applied for a job as a Chef Cooking Instructor.  After having an interview she was given the opportunity to do a demo lesson.  Her challenge:  teach the class how to make an omelet.

My friend is an amazing cook.  She is one of these people who can somehow make a glass of water taste better.  She has a natural talent for cooking.  Yet teaching someone how to cook rather than just cooking presented her with a whole new set of challenges.  I asked her, what type of teacher will you be?

Would you be the kind of teacher who:

Shows her student an egg and an omelet and then says, “This is what we are making today. Here is what it looks like when we start and here is the finished product.  Ok, off you go.”  I fear that this would result in a few with prior knowledge of omelet preparation knowing how it is done (the enrichment group – just so bright!!) the ones who might cry as they “don’t get it”, and the ones who simply do nothing.

Or she could be the type of teacher who shows and names all the materials, makes sure everyone has them and is sitting quietly at their station. She gives them a list of written directions and sends them off to complete their omelet, reminding  them that the directions are all written out.  Some students get right to the project, crack’n open the eggs, throwing  them on the frying pan and using everything they know about egg making, except the directions.  Others might actually read the directions, step by step and never get to the omelet making. Some might read the directions and complete the steps based on their understanding of what they think the directions are describing.  You would still have the I don’t get it group, some still crying, and those who don’t have their glasses or have difficulty reading,  politely pretending to cook, copying from others, telling egg jokes,  or playing with the eggs.  Eggs are fun to roll around and good for playing catch.

Or she could be the type of teacher who shows each child the steps, one at a time, such as how you crack open an egg.  Then, she runs around and cracks the egg  open for each of her students, assuming that they need her help and assistance with all the steps.  After all, she is the teacher.

Or she could be the type of teacher who lists the steps for all to see and she reads all the steps to the students.  She shows her students the materials and the finished product – but, she never actually makes the omelet herself.  After all, they learned about eggs in the first class they took.  The other chef instructor taught them that.  Oh, but never having made the omelet herself, she doesn’t know that they may have some struggles along the way.  For example, what if you get some egg shell in your egg, what if the heat is too high, what if it falls apart when you flip it?

Or she could be the type of teacher who demonstrates and tells each step. Very slowly, she demonstrates the numerous steps to making the omelet – step by step- ingredient by ingredient- detail by detail.  Alas, when it finally comes time to have her students make their omelets, there is only five minutes left in the class and only four students are still listening, or you think they are listening. The others are playing with the strings on their aprons, tossing their eggs in the air, or gazing out the window.

Or she could be the type of teacher who has a great omelet recipe and she knows they would love it.  Okay, it’s a little tricky and complicated, but it tastes great.  She demonstrates it step by step, has the directions posted, and sends her future chefs off to cook.  Some tell her they don’t like the ingredients she used in her omelet and ask if they might try another way, some only get half way done, some say “they are bad omelet makers,” or “I quit, omelets are stupid anyway.”

I warned her, remember everyone has their own prior experience with omelets, some know a lot about them, some may know the word, others never heard of it and when you say omelet some may think you are saying Um – lets….  Some love eating them, others just hate eggs, and some think that only birds or the Easter Bunny know about eggs.  Some students may have made them at home because their families love to cook and others – may not even have a kitchen. Some students will be quick learners and you will be amazed at how quickly they pick up the skills of whisking the egg or flipping it over.  Others may need a few eggs to practice with.

“At the end of your lesson,” I ask my friend,” what are your expectations for your students?”  Should they have a beautiful omelet? Should they have an I-tried-my-best – omelet?   Will everyone have made an omelet? What about those who don’t?  Regardless of the omelet, what else do you want them to leave your class with?  What will they take away inside of them?  Will it be a sense of I tried my best or I failed?  A feeling of I learned something and I will learn some more and continue to get better at my omelet skills or I know everything there is to know about omelet making – I’m done?  Will they feel like they had fun, are energized, challenged, frustrated, defeated or sad?

“At the end of the lesson,” I ask my friend, “what are your expectations for yourself?”  Will you be angry if everyone doesn’t make a good omelet or will you understand that everyone including yourself did their best?  Will you think about what went well and what didn’t and learn from that reflection?  Will you take the credit if everyone is successful with their omelet or blame the students if it doesn’t quite work as you planned?  Will you quit omelet instruction and stick with grilled cheese sandwiches?  Will you understand that you are on a journey yourself and that there is more on this journey than just the starting point and the finish line?

As a teacher who carefully plans her lessons each week, having this discussion about omelet making and teaching others how it is done reminded me of my teaching.  Regardless if it is omelets or reading, teaching encompasses so many different elements.  As I write my lesson plans I’m thinking about each lesson in terms of teaching how to cook an egg.  Did I model and do it myself?  Have I taken into account my students and their background on the subject?  Do I know where they are at, what they already know or don’t know? Most importantly, are they leaving this lesson with some new learning along their learning journey and can they use this learning somewhere else on the journey and build on it –  and that’s no yolk.

Towards the end of my mother’s life she began to think of death and dying with a new perspective, not with fear and dread, but more of inevitability, a last chapter, paragraph, line in her story.  She would say things like, “God has forgotten me… this is not living… when will it be my time.” I too talked of it differently, comforting her, saying things like, “He hasn’t Mom…. Your time will come….I know it is hard…. Hang in there.”   Sitting in that small studio apartment, with a few furniture pieces from the past, her Christmas cactus, and photos of family…. we were waiting.  Waiting for something we knew was not far away, death, on its way, like a package to be delivered.  Ding dong….

As I take another scoop of the yogurt parfait my mother would always eat, I am reminded of how she could never finish hers and would wrap it up, ever so carefully, like plastic wrap something never to be wasted.  She would cradle it gently in her lap bring it back to her refrigerator where she would keep it with all the other halves eaten meals and snacks. Once in the frig they would begin their own life cycle there. Stage 1: sit in foil or plastic wrap for a few days.  Stage 2: be looked at once again, possibly labeled and then moved into the freezer.  Stage 3:  freezer opened, reorganized and placed back in to collect ice.  Stage 4:  my sisters or I would eventually throw them out – never eaten.  It was like saving all of these foods were hope – hope they would someday be thawed, eaten and enjoyed.  But – their chance of ever being eaten ended once they were wrapped and placed in the frig, stage 1.

Eventually Mom’s diet became a liquid one – Milkshakes, Ensure, ice tea and pills.  She loved her chocolate milk shakes and I would try to get her one every day. I tried different types for a while, from different places, but she liked chocolate the best from a local farm as they would make them not too thick which allowed her to drink them through a straw.

At the farm, you needed to order the milk shakes at a window where ice cream was served.  Often there was no one there so a little bell , like one on a child’s bicycle, was placed there to ring signaling that you required service. Someone, usually a young girl, (although for a brief time there was a very nice young man who I told the story of my mom to and he would always make me a large milkshake and only charge me for a small) would make it for me, “Chocolate please, not too thick,” I would request.

One day I went in for my usual order and rang the bell as no one was in the ice cream window.  A woman about my age, who was working at the counter where you paid, looked over at me and announced very loudly, “Can someone help The Milk Shake Lady?!”  For a moment I stopped breathing, and rewound the tape in my mind.  Did that just happen, I asked myself.  Did she just call ME The Milk Shake Lady?  I had worked in many places like this as a teen and I knew how many of the patrons were given nicknames that only the staff knew,  and now I had one, and it was terrible and worse yet it had been announced to everyone in the farm!  I was known as The Milk Shake Lady!

Now I was not the 95 pounds my mother was at this time, so I’m thinking – they’re thinking – that if this lady would just give up her daily chocolate milkshakes (not too thick) she’d lose 20 pounds!  I suddenly felt the urge to have a t-shirt or a least a button made that said, “These milk shakes are not for me.  They are for my 95 pound mother!”

Well I swallowed what was left of my pride and ordered the chocolate milk shake (not too thick).  I did not chat with the young girl who made it and The Milk Shake Lady left the building, giving a scowl to the woman of my age who had announced my  nickname to all. (I’m still thinking of a name for her – not too flattering.)

I took the milk shake to my mother and told her the story of the milk shake and how they called me The Milk Shake lady and I made her laugh.  She laughed and I laughed and she drank her chocolate milkshake, (not too thick).

Sometimes in life we need to be The Milk Shake Lady. We need to put our pride, and our vanity and our excuses behind us and just keep doing what we know we need to do.  If others think those milk shakes are for me and that’s what keeps me happy – so be it.  But I know they were for a bigger cause, a bigger cause for the smaller things – the small things that make others happy, maybe even make them laugh.  For the milk shakes, The Milk Shake Lady and Mom are all the past.  The package was delivered and The Milk Shake Lady no longer visits the farm.

 

Next year I think I’m going to make my classroom a little more boring.  Boring, to be bored, these are words that infer a negative image, sitting around with nothing to do.  We use phrases like, “I’m bored stiff,” or even worse “I’m bored to death,” to describe this feeling.  Dictionary.cambridge.org defines it as “ feeling tired and unhappy because something is not interesting or because you have nothing to do”. Synonyms are listed as fatigued, tired and antonyms  as thrilled and amused.  Being bored happens because sometimes we are not interested in the jobs needed to be done, they do not “thrill” or “amuse” us and very rarely do we have nothing to do, we just don’t want to do that which needs being done.

When I was a kid being bored happened,  but the trick was you kept it to yourself.  You would never announce to a parent, “I’m bored,” because it was usually followed up with, “Well, find something to do or I’ll find something for you.”  You see, there were plenty of jobs growing up in my house that needed doing and there was no attitude that a child couldn’t do them.  I grew up in a “teach-a-man-to-fish” sort of family, meaning if I didn’t know how to do something, you were taught and then expected to do it.  The things my parents would “find” for me to do were not what I had in mind when I had announced of my boredom.  They were not meant to thrill nor amuse me; they just needed to be done.  Here’s how that list would go:  1)  weed  2) clean out the toy shelves 3) babysit my younger siblings 4) iron my father’s shirts  5) match the socks.  Sometimes the list would vary with a sort of “Chore-de-Jour” based on the season or an upcoming family event such as a holiday or a snow storm.  Then I was offered the additional choices of shoveling the driveway or polishing the silver.  Ugh… one job worse than the other.  Living in a coastal community the weeding usually included long hours on your knees and many encounters with frogs and snakes that lay beneath the weeds you just tugged up (and you had better get the root or my mother would make you redo it).  The toy shelf job meant you were signing up for a week of work and had better be prepared to make some tough decisions about what toys you really wanted and what could be given away.  If truth be told, I’d usually take the babysitting job as that meant I could lay on the couch watching TV with my siblings and I was the boss.  Ironing my father’s shirts was true labor, boring, standing, and those shirts would be up for inspection later on.  And the socks – that was like as my dad called it, KP Duty, you sat and matched 100 white socks and 100 blue socks that all appeared the same but in some way were actually unique.  (This job we still offer to my children in their moments of boredom or when we deem they need a little “thinking time”.)

Yet in this time of childhood boredom, knowing that the choice was mine of either finding something to do or having my parents find it for me,  I found ways to fill the time.  Boredom led me some great thinking.  It lead me to observe – noticing things I might not have seen before, like how the puddle in front of my house was always moving and how the birds were always busy and appeared to be talking with each other.  It lead me to pretend – playing house, school, and pioneer people.  It lead me to create – making up our own games, playing with water, building things from items found in my yard.  It lead me to exercise – playing a game of tag, kickball, or riding on my bicycle. Being bored was a good thing for me and I think it is definitely under-rated.

This year I will not go out of my way to be a boring teacher.  Like always, I will try to somehow “thrill” and at times, I may even  “amuse” my students, but I will also understand that my job is not to do this all the time.  There will be down time, time when  children need to make their own choices as what they will do and not always look to the adult in the room for the solution.  Perhaps I will follow the lesson of my parents, “Oh you have nothing to do, here’s something for you…..”  It may seem a little cruel at first, after all  don’t I want to provide them with interesting puzzles, intricate word searches, challenging math sheets, meaningful content crossword puzzles – no, not really.  What I really want to do is to have them experience that time of quiet, of thinking, of being in charge of their own choices and how they will fill their bored time.  Following the line from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come,” perhaps I can build the field and they can do the playing.   I provide the methods to observe, the materials to create, the places to play.  Maybe I can turn the idea of Bored Time into something that my students will look forward to, “Yippee, I’m bored!”  they will call and then go and find something to amuse and maybe even thrill themselves, (or others ) with.