When I get home in the afternoons, I always need a little snack. This afternoon, I started a load of laundry like the responsible adult that I am, and then I proceeded to open my laptop and click on the browser. Sometimes, I try to use technology in ways it isn’t meant to be used. This habit has been engrained into my twenty-first-century-white-female-privileged-instant-gratification-craving American brain. For instance, I have had the thought that I should just try and call my missing keys to find out where they have gone. The same thought process goes for my wallet, as well. I never worry about the missing article until the smart part of my brain pipes up in the back saying, “That isn’t in fact a viable option and you may have to rely on your physical senses and/or the range of motion that your body is capable of to locate your overall unnecessary personal items.” In today’s recent experience, I clicked open my browser to Google how my life will turn out. I really enjoy Googling things that I don’t know much about, such as the SS St. Louis, the Mongols, President Jimmy Carter, and Finnish death metal band member’s personal lives. If there’s Wikipedia page I’d like to peruse, it’s the one about my own life. However, I’m a little too early to be looking up my own Wikipedia page and that’s just not how computers work [insert ominous ‘yet’ that echoes into the distance].
Anyways.
This is supposed to be a recipe for cheese toast.
As I was making cheese toast today, I realized that teaching is a lot like making cheese toast. So here’s my recipe for cheese toast, and some musings about teaching.
First, select your bread type. Today, I selected thinly sliced Jewish Rye Bread. This is only too appropriate of a selection as I am currently eyeballs deep in planning my Holocaust unit. Now, in a classroom setting, you don’t get to pick your bread. Your bread is your class. Maybe you got a steaming new loaf of freshman. You could have a whole grain, or bleached and enriched class. Maybe you got the butts of a loaf. Like I said, you don’t get to pick your bread. But you might get to pick your cheese.
Secondly, pick your cheese. I picked shredded parmesan cheese because that’s what I bought for my salads ages ago. I’m all out of salad, but still have plenty of cheese. I am pleased with this cheese/bread pairing because Jewish Rye bread has a very distinct flavor, almost like Sour Dough. I think it’s the rye that makes it taste sourly bitter. Parmesan is not necessarily a sweet cheese, or a light cheese either. It’s kind of dry, as cheeses go. In this recipe, cheese is the metaphor for your curriculum. It could be one lesson, or it could be an entire unit. This could be cheese that a bread connoisseur picked out, or it could be the boring old cheese that everyone eats just because that’s what everyone eats and has eaten for decades. Either way, the cheese has to go on the bread.
The first step of making cheese toast is putting your bread in some sort of incubation device. I prefer a toaster oven. I don’t actually have a toaster, (and that’s kind of a funny story too) so toast is made in the toaster oven. I always put my bread in the toaster oven and wait a minute or two before applying cheese.
The most important step in this entire process is applying the cheese. Obviously, that’s what we as teachers are doing. But there’s so many factors that go into this process. For example, you might grab a generous handful of shredded parmasian cheese and eagerly thrust your fistful into the oven, with the intention of flinging the cheese in the direction of the bread, which is in an oven that is HOT. Teachers have to gauge the preparedness of the bread before applying the cheese. We have make sure the cheese is appropriate for the bread. We can’t just apply any old cheese, it has to be relevant cheese! Insightful cheese! Cheese that benefits the bread! Cheese selected through the reflection on data about the bread! It’s a very detailed process. I feel confident in my ability to pair cheese and bread; it’s the application that requires finesse. As a novice, my gusto combined with my poor depth perception was slightly off and as I was throwing my handful of parmesan cheese at my bread, I burnt the hell out of the top of my hand on the oven ceiling and the cheese went everywhere. It got on some of the bread, but not all of it. This really happened in my kitchen 45 minutes ago.
It also really happened in my classroom. After creating a baller half-sheet with a thesis formula and giving them examples on the board, I abandoned the lesson ten minutes in. The blank stares were suffocating. My gusto threw cheese all over the place. However, a few days later, when the students were asking how to write a thesis, I had a great resource for them. Their thesis statements are now currently awe-inspiring.
Like I said. It’s the application that takes finesse.
Teaching as Storytelling 