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May.10,2011The other day, talking to teachers I work with, I stated a few lessons I learned concerning parent-teacher relationships. One of the key enlightenments I had, in my opinion, was to realize that parents are supposed to advocate for their child, and the teacher’s job is to take their experience in and respond with understanding and with actions as much as possible. I still get annoyed by some situations when I am overloaded with work and a parent brings up something like a toy that has been lost – when the school policy is to keep toys at home to begin with. In moments like this I need to remind myself that teaching is not really about the subject, but about the learning that happens when dealing with the subject. Having that idea permeating my philosophy and my actions as a teacher turns the toy situation into a teaching moment when rules, responsibility, and search strategies can be discussed and exercised. Furthermore, the importance of the lost object for the child does not change just because the school wants the object to stay out of its grounds, so there is suffering that needs to be understood rather than yelled upon.
The down side of this whole ideal is that I find myself juggling priorities: the child who has no autonomy to change clothes when wet, the child who does not join the group, the child who speaks too softly, the child whose parents are divorcing, the child who is regressing because of a younger sibling… That, as well, is part of being a teacher: to teach the whole child, conflicts and all.
I had no time to deal with that, however, because hubby and I went to New York, then Watertown for vacation and family time. While in Watertown, I spent nights typing and revising recipes. My mother-in-law, who is a lover of the English language and who used to teach it, helped me assure clarity and precision in the use of terms, such as ‘rinse’ instead of ‘wash’ when referring to vegetables.
mold with a soft top for handling.
As I became more aware about the advantages of introducing the wonders of cooking in a learning environment, I grew increasingly serious about the materials I wanted to use. I designed a program that would evolve as children did, beginning with basic concepts such as pouring, stirring, adding, and recognizing simple ingredients such as flour, water, milk, sugar, etc., and evolving towards measuring and independently preparing the recipes. In 1st grade children were becoming familiar with the differences among chopping, dicing, and slicing, and developing the motor skills to perform each one of these safely. Second graders started to work more emphatically with pre-defined tasks in small groups, making sure everyone had the experiences as a reader, a leader, a measurer, a mixer, a washer and a fetcher before anyone repeated a task. In 3rd grade I guided children through more complex ideas, such as problem-solving how to divide the work or how to prepare a recipe that calls for 2 eggs when you have only 1 per group. The 4rth graders had the most autonomy of all: after learning about certain types of food they were asked to research, choose and prepare a recipe with their group, and we celebrated by sharing the results and voting their favorite.
Working with all levels of students, and different levels of readers, I learned to differentiate language as well as layout of the recipes I offered them. After researching a lot, I realized cookbooks written for children are actually written for adults to cook with children, or for very literate children.
I started thinking about the garden again. Beds are being dug, weeds are being pulled out, seeds are being sown. One of the beauties of living in a temperate zone is the very evident difference among seasons. The yearly death of trees, flowers, and bushes saddens me as much as their rebirth fills my heart with joy. The first sprouts in March never fail to put a smile on my face, and each year I decide I will find time and energy to be a good gardener.