Connections in Cooking & Teaching

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   One of my hobbies is food. Particularly making food. If you think about it, recipes are just substitute plans from a chef. Except with a recipe, the end result is a hand crafted delicious meal or, if it tanks, ordering take out. The fun part about recipes is that they can be tailored to fit the needs of particular diets, cravings and size of audience. If you're following my metaphor, then you're getting the noticeable parallels between being a constructivist teacher and a chef. At the heart of each is a century old craft that is passed down from one generation to next. Each profession requires creativity, focus and constant devotion.

 I enjoy cooking because I find meditation in the making and an admitted reward in the eating. I love the science and pride that happens when I successfully mix together the ingredients to make a delectable, edible product. There is an undefinable reward in cooking for others that makes the whole process gratifying. Food transcend languages, defines cultures and brings people together across the world. I see this same point of connection in learning. Through out history people have sustained and given birth to civilizations through learning and sharing new methods of process. They've also had to eat along the way.

Teaching and crafting are professions that require one to see what is possible with the materials in front of them and then build something. Each is a role of lifelong learning. They are professions that have a constant cycle and history of struggle between apprentices and masters that give way to forward motion through questioning and revision.

The same questioning and revision can be heard in the conversation held by the STEM and Maker movements. It revisits a classic recipe that educators know to be true; there is valuable, authentic learning that takes place through making something. Not only making some thing, but anything that is meaningful and brings happiness to ourselves and others. There is a pure process of learning by seeing what is possible in the ingredients before us and then building our own recipe of design. Bon apetit!



Thank you to my lovely meal at The Cookery, The PBS documentary Food on the Brain, Design Make Play (the book) and all my foodie friends for inspiring this post.