Mom's Recipes

My mom taught me how to cook. She also taught me how to dance. They often happened at the same time. While the food would be simmering, flavors marrying and marinating, she would pull me down from off the counter and teach me how to slow dance.

“Make every trip count,” she would often say, usually in reference to taking out the trash rather than a waltz. Be efficient. If you can carry three bags instead of two, save yourself that extra trip. As it was with chores it was with cooking and dancing. While the flavors did their thing, she made the most of our time and taught me how to dance.

“Your partner should never not know where to go. You have to lead; you have to tell her where to go before she’s supposed to go there. If she ever has a question of what comes next, you’re not doing it right. And, don’t just go in circles.” A lot for a 10-year old to think about.

It was in the kitchen, then, that I learned about the all-intimidating dance floor and about food.

There is an art to cooking. Recipes are great, but they’re only guides. “Make it your own,” my mother often says. Take the recipe, know the basics, and then have fun with it.

As it is with the kitchen it is with the classroom. There are certain tenets of teaching and of learning--certain rules that make for a strong education. Still, strictly following those rules does not an education make. You need the teacher’s personality, passions, and interests to inform lesson plans. You need a child’s personality, passions, and interests to inform how lessons are learned and skills are demonstrated. You need culture, ethos, and philosophy to shine through.

In short, in order for a school to thrive you need to make it your own.

Often, that involves making every trip count. How can we maximize a math lesson by incorporating some language arts? How can a student’s interest in frogs guide a future science unit? How can we leverage all that we know, all that we are, in order to keep the flavors marinating and cook something beautiful?

If my mother has any say in the matter, it would involve leaders who leave much room for creativity. It would involve knowing the basics and then adapting them to fit a school’s culture and philosophy. And it would most certainly involve the primary ingredient of the students and their experience.

The school as kitchen sometimes looks like teachers and administrators as chefs, but it should also look like students trying out some chopping techniques, sampling some marinades, and sautéing some greens. After all, the whole point is to have them take over the kitchen one day.