"Don't throw water on a grease fire!"
When you teach 5 high school culinary classes every day, you end up saying the same things over and over again:
"What are you doing?"
"Stop smacking each other with the dish rags."
"When you microwave the butter, put it in a microwavable container."
"Guys, the plastic containers aren't microwavable THEY WILL MELT."
"METAL BOWLS ARE NOT MICROWAVABLE USE A PYREX DISH!"
Which is promptly met with the, "Oh yeah huh," head nod.
*woosah*
Culinary 1 is a hot mess of young kids with no cooking experience, listening skills...or people skills for that matter.
Most of the Culinary 1 students are sophomores, a few juniors, and a ton of seniors sprinkled in.
Have you SEEN a class of seniors? Do you REMEMBER being a senior?
Listen....the combination of cocky confidence plus an astounding lack of common sense makes for quite the culinary experience.
"Chef Glo lost MasterChef twice but she auditioned again because third time's the charm!"
I have not.
"Chef Glo, I think you have too much faith in us."
I did.
"I know that we have work to do but he's never seen World War Z so now we have to watch it in class instead of doing our assignment. It's really important."
It was not.
The reality is that when you're in high school, your focus is on having fun.
Which leads me to one of our most important directions:
"Don't put water on a grease fire."
Before I get too far ahead, no one put water on a grease fire - we haven't even had one - but it's an important instruction and it's also an interesting metaphor for high school.
If you know much about cooking, you know that the best way to put out a small kitchen fire is to smother it or use baking soda to extinguish it.
You don't turn up the heat.
You don't run away.
And you don't throw water on it in a panic, ultimately causing it to explode.
The best way to handle it is calmly, logically, and methodically.
Are you beginning to see the connection?
With the many, many pressures and expectations that teachers face, it can be very easy to miss the important cues for putting out those fires.
A disengaged student is met with apathy.
A quiet student is assumed to be on track even when they're secretly struggling.
A disruptive student is met with a frustrated and escalated teacher.
The fires may look different, but there are proper ways to address them.
The question is, are you in the right head space to make the right decision?
I felt very overwhelmed and discouraged early in the first semester.
I don't know why, but it was probably because of my innate desire to be perfect.
One day, something went completely wrong and I was totally deflated.
My creativity was overtaken by a dark cloud hanging over my head, telling me that the next day would be awful.
As I was sitting on the couch crying to my husband, a thought popped into my head.
"I think we're going to have a rock, paper, scissors tournament tomorrow," I said.
Confused, he asked me why.
"I need to shake this off, but I can only do that by doing something that can bring me joy and laughter."
He smiled.
Part of properly putting out fires at school requires putting out the destructive fires within you.
Do we always have rock, paper, scissors tournaments?
Absolutely not.
We also play Zombie Jeopardy and Get to Know You Jenga, but that's beside the point.
Our students need to learn, but they also need to have fun - and so do we.
So, I'll leave you with these questions to simmer on:
What do you need to get centered?
What is going to help you drop-kick that dark cloud out of the sky?
What's the proper way to handle the grease fires in your classroom (or simply in your life)?
Teaching is tiring and draining and all of those things, but we don't have to be dragged down (or explode) in the process.
Kommentare