Starting from scratch

One and a half week into vacation and my students' faces are starting to become fuzzy and their names are a distant memory. Life is now happily filled with catching up on TV shows. One of them is the Chef Jeff project on Food tv. I'll let Food tv do the explaining. 

About the Show

Jeff Henderson grew up on the tough streets of South Central L.A. and San Diego. At 19 he was running a $35,000-a-week cocaine operation. At 24, Jeff was arrested and sent to prison, where he spent the next ten years. While incarcerated, Jeff discovered a passion for cooking and the drive to turn his life around. Jeff became Executive Chef at Café Bellagio in Las Vegas, wrote a bestselling book, and now he is focusing on giving back. In The Chef Jeff Project, he takes six at-risk young adults and commits to turning their lives around by putting them to work in his catering company, Posh Urban Cuisine. He arms them with the knowledge, the skills and, ultimately, the opportunity for a new life with a culinary career.

I was watching the very first episode when Chef Jeff laid down the gauntlet of the first challenge: to make your signature dish in 45 minutes. I've seen a Top Chef episode that featured a similar challenge, so in my mind popped up images of foie gras terraines, delicately poached eggs with shaved truffles, or a meringue floating in a sea of creme anglaise with passion fruit foam.  

Instead I cringed as I watched one student stand there helpless for 15 minutes saying, "I don't even know how to cook!" Maria, who had the vision of making a quesadilla, proceeded to burn her chorizo. And Shante chopped her shrimp in an unbelievable snail's pace because her long acrylic nails were getting in the way. The presented "signature dishes" were garlic mashed potatoes, a limp salad from the girl who couldn't cook, and spam masubi dubbed as "South Central Sushi". I was appalled for the contestants and Chef Jeff who had to taste each dish. But he surprised me by calmly and seriously tasting each dish and offering genuine commentary. He didn't crack a joke at the laughably amateur signature dishes. 

It reminded me of a time when my friend helped me grade papers and she turned to me in disbelief asking, "Are these 7th graders?" Let's just say that she wasn't dumbfounded by my students' extraordinary talents. After trying to decipher sloppy scribbles that wouldn't have made more sense if it were written neatly, I don't blame her. I wanted to shove those papers and them into a closet, ashamed of not only them, but of my own teaching abilities. But I shouldn't be embarrassed at all. I need to pop my snooty visions of creme brulee and tuna tartare, and instead accept and respect my students for who they are and what they can offer. If all they can make is packaged jello, then hey, jello it is. I love jello. From there, who knows how far they'll go and what they'll be able to create. 

Resolution

If you ever get a chance to visit the Getty before Jan. 9th, you'll see the Irving Penn exhibit. In his small studio, he had people of various trades come on in with all their necessary gear and pose against a stark, blank backdrop. 

What I enjoyed most about this exhibit was seeing how people actually looked like their jobs.  It was impossible to reserve judgment about these people apart from what they did for a living, so I know that my own bias was playing heavily into seeing how the morgue caretaker looked so...morgue-y. But I wondered if these people found the job to fit them as snug as a glove or if they've evolved to eventually resemble their occupations.  

What would our own photos look like? Would we be armed with the trusty Blackberry, laptop, and thermos of coffee? But more importantly, what would be the expression on our faces? Would we presenting to the world an occupation that we love?

I forget that I'm daily portraying myself and my career to an audience of students. So often I show them the fissures of stress rather than unadulterated joy in working for a living. In that sense, I believe that all of our various trades are connected: we are all posing daily with our occupations, for our occupations. We are all unofficial representatives. 

God knows how hard it is view a job as anything but a job. I awoke abruptly after having a nightmare about being back at school, only to find that I was granted unlimited hours to linger further in my cozy bed.  The prospect of waking up early to a freezing morning, chiseling away at a marble slab of ungraded papers, and dealing with students who cheat, lie, and give up, doesn't quite fill me with love and inspiration. However, if I am painting a portrait of a teacher for my students, I want to show bliss. It can be a rather quiet, stoic bliss or the big, grinning kind like the plumber above. 

Should I be concerned?

There are things that I see and hear in the classroom that leaves me dumb-founded. Following a split-second paralysis, comes dilemma of deciding the next course of action. Do I take the matter seriously and go about fixing it, or do I accept such shenanigans as being a part of middle school life?

Case 1: It was career day when a firefighter came in, inducing oohs and ahhs over all the firemen gear he brought in with him. He finished his speigl about the training and everyday routines firemen go through. The class was enraptured and inspired to do something as significant as saving lives. When he asked a boy in the first row what his dream job was, he replied, "To be a criminal".

Verdict: Red alarm.

I wanted to bury my head in shame and was about to take some disciplinary actions, when he replied after a moment of shocked silence, "Just kidding, I want to be a UFC fighter". Not much better but I'll take that over a juvenile delinquent.

Case 2: A journal entry from a student read, "If looks were punches, I would beat myself up by looking in the mirror."

Verdict: Alarmed.

I pulled the student aside at the end of class and asked him what this sadly eloquent simile was about. He shrugged sheepishly and said he just wrote it casually. I found that fact more disturbing.

Case 3: I look up from grading quizzes to find one solitary girl not doing her work and idly playing with a marker. Then I saw her raise that marker and carefully draw a perfect, curly moustache above her lips. Our eyes met and we looked at each other for awhile, me with my mouth open, and her with her newly drawn 'stache quickly drying atop her lips.

Verdict: Shocked.

Although highly amusing, this student's case turned out to be the most serious. Upon conferring with other teachers and her grade counselor I found out that she was showing signs of spaciness across the board and may be suffering from depression.

It's a topsy turvy world we live in, and a classroom is certainly not immune from it.

Labor of Love

A little detail I failed to mention in the previous post...all the manual labor of decorating was done by students. All I did was point and mime while they stapled, cut, and assembled. The biggest jobs have been completed (while I was scarfing lunch down at my desk) and now all that is left to do is to cut white paper into snowflakes. They're doing an awesome job, but some may be taking their jobs a bit too far.

One of my "elves" bounded into my classroom during lunch, sketching out her idea for increasing the efficiency and quantity of snowflake output on my dry erase board. Check out her self dubbed "Elf Stations" that lays out the plan for a snowflake assembling line that'll crank out more flakes than we're currently producing.

She was really upset that not enough student helpers showed up to make up the manpower needed for project Elf Station. When I pointed out that some students may get bored being stuck with "Geometric Cutting", she paused in reflection, and then responded, "We can have the elves switch stations every 10 minutes!" I think we've got a future CEO in our midst.

Most wonderful time of the year~

When I was a young girl, I would dream of having the Christmas that I saw in the movies, read in stories, and heard about in carols.

My fantasy Christmas involved living in the same affluent neighborhood as Kevin from "Home Alone" with pretty lights trimmed around my house.

Of course there would be a wreath hung on the door, welcoming old and new friends.

And once you step inside, there'd be a cozy fireplace filling the room with warmth while outside, a snowstorm waged its war.

A lot of the things I "do for the students" are really just for my own pleasure. Armed with construction paper and purchases from the 99 cent store, anything is possible. Have a wonderful holiday season everyone!

Tradition

Stole this from Selena and I think it's perfect.