the burger bash

3rd annual D.P. Todd year-end Burger Bash

How does your school end the year for the students? A nice three hour exam? Unreturned book fees? I suppose these will be with us for some time to come, a little pain for some gain. I would argue that exams can still be about assessing meaningful learning rather than ranking the little darlings. The exam pressure isn't all bad, it brings out some interesting resolve in students that is sometimes absent earlier in the month.  Some kind of final assessment clears away any doubts about whether a student is ready for next level and gives a few of them a final chance to establish that they've met the learning outcomes.

Three years ago, our school's bon vivant Socials teacher turned Culinary Arts teacher Mr. Ian Leitch hatched a plot for doing away with anything resembling an exam. He came up with a twofold assessment to allow his Cafeteria students to demonstrate their learning and celebrate their accomplishment.  The first part assesses individual competency and involves the documentation of a multi-course meal the student prepares for their families. Each step is justified, explained, and prepared with care, often tapping into cultural themes and family favorites that have significance for the student and his/her family. Back in class the student shares the story, pictures, and photos of how it went, complete with family evaluation. Assessment measures performance and learning re outcomes, but it also places a value on the work and personal learning that students self-describe (ultimately more lasting  than learning based on external standards).

Mr. Leitch's Cafeteria students work hard all year to provide amazing, healthy, tasty meals 2-3 times a week for a school that has no cafeteria, no industrial kitchen, not even a place for kids to sit and eat lunch. Carts of food scuttle down the halls in anticipation of lunchtime to the little snack counter that serves as a staging area for food service. The creative (sometimes experimental) student-designed meals are served up to about a third of our 750 students, who line up with $4 and a hunger for artfully arranged offerings such as 1) pulled pork on bannock with with cole slaw, 2) New York steak on a potato tart with prawns and sundried tomato cream reduction, 3) trio of Indian dishes (based on a student's parents' wedding meal), 4) garden veg sandwich with aged cheddar and mango chutney on foccacia. Etc! Stuff that Veg would be proud of.

The Cafeteria course uses some great blended learning -- student time is divided between classroom based lessons, independent group meetings, food prep, food service, and other work. They have a regular block, some of which they need to attend (not all of it in their foods classroom), some of which is optional, and they also give up some of their lunchtime. There is also an expectation for online/mobile contributions, e.g. recipe development, check-in with their group and teacher, and facebook promotion of their lunchtime food service. In my mind this is the right "blend" for blended learning -- the face-to-face time is very structured and involves powerful teaching, the independent work is group-based to provide accountability, and the online work makes the other parts go better and doesn't require students to be zoned out in front of a computer. They call their program/operation "Te Amo" (Spanish for "I love you," which was what one of our exchange students said when he tasted their food for the first time in 2010). The teacher is compensated with two teaching blocks for a single class, which recognizes that he gives up most lunches and spends parts of his evenings picking up food orders, stocking, and working with student groups face-to-face or by mobile phone. I'd call that a "flipped classroom" but this is becoming common enough now that we have to start seeing it as part of the spectrum and not a reversal of old-school teaching and learning.

Watching Mr. Leitch teach is a pleasure -- he opens up their thinking and senses to how important food is in our culture, our lives, our emotional and physical health, and brings them, step by step, to a place where they create beautiful dishes that could be served in restaurants. His manner is so full of joy and respect, inclusive without pandering and humorous without losing focus, and always about the students being their best. Mauri Bell, a dynamic Ed Assistant connected to the class and program acts as sous chef and negotiator/facilitator on the long list of duties performed by students, in addition to working with some special kids in the program. The class structure runs very much like a professional kitchen, with students rotating through important roles from dishes to top chef. They have "iron chef competitions," hour-long intense workshops on single ingredients, student submitted food "problems" to solve (e.g. how to turn a family recipe into an event production line), some keynotes on process and safety, and group accountability for pulling off orders, planning, and production. They even made cheese.

The second part of Mr. Leitch's course wrap-up benefits the whole school and assesses teamwork, very important in a program that will/does lead many into the food service industry. At the end of June, the Te Amo Caf students form groups and design the ultimate burger -- secret sauces, the right cheese, crazy good toppings, and usually a special twist. They build a demo burger, photograph it, market it around the school, and sell tickets to buy them. A bit of friendly competition and a chance for them to act and talk about food to the whole school they way they have been doing in class. How's that for a final exam? The rest is pure anticipation and celebration. In the staff room, teachers are going on about which burger(s) they have bought tickets for, talking about what the students said to convince them to buy it. On the last day, the grill is going before the last class is out... of course the doors are open and my hallway is filling with the smell of cooked meat, so much for my lesson plan! The burgers are cooked on one grill, and each team has a station out on the grass to assemble their prized creation for all the students who picked their burger from the others.

Our school's leadership class (Mr. Balazs) teams up to coordinate the rest of the burger bash. The yearbooks are ready for distribution, and are given out as the students end the last class. Our admin team has dragged big tables out to the fields, and the students pour out to wait for their burgers and sign yearbooks. We've done this for three years now and it is so cool to see the interactions and conversations. Signing a yearbook brings out some pent-up sentiment in everybody. From signing big Canadian flags for our exchange students, or listening to the music DJ'd by our talented leadership students, the event had a great vibe. I want to use the words joy and respect, even if these don't normally fit with the idea of a year-end party (you'd think some of them would want to break stuff and get the heck out). The students left the field after a couple of hours, not even much to clean up (although our admin and the leadership students were there for that, too).  The first year we did this, it struck such a need that we finally had to ask kids to think about going home at 6:00 after they had talked, danced to the music, and signed yearbooks for 3 hours.

This year was no different -- joy and respect (perhaps modelled by their Culinary Arts teacher) were what the students delivered. I had the Royal... it had a spicy honey garlic sauce, monterey jack cheese, and pineapple. A bit messy but tasted fantastic. The mix of food, conversation, sunny skies, and yearbooks also provided some serendipity, neat encounters that don't happen elsewhere. I heard one student, while signing the yearbook of another, say "I didn't really get to know you that well this year, it was nice talking to you." Lots of hugs and laughs and teens being teens, but no booze or funny business, go figure. I was especially pleased this year to be asked to sign the yearbooks of a few special students whose progress and resilience I really admire. Some of our students are rough around the edges, including a bunch of kids that take Mr. Leitch's Cafeteria class, but you'd never know it from watching them at the burger bash. Your teachers are proud of you.

A very nice way to end the year, even if there is that other messy business -- a few exams to take the edge off the post-burger-bash glow.  Thanks Mr. Leitch, Ms. Bell, Te Amo crew, staff and students for a great finish.

200 yr old spoon

Another great day for heritage project presentations! Christine brought us stories of extreme grief from WWII-era Croatia, counterbalanced as is so often the case with the journey to Canada and an end to grief. Bruce contrasted his German/English background with his Filipino background, a contrast that sometimes led to conflict. Braydon told us about his Kookum and Moosum (Cree for Grandma and Grandpa) and the difficulty of maintaining Aboriginal languages in modern Canadian society. Adam delved into his Irish roots, and showed us some Irish turf dub from a peat bog and a carving made from petrified turf. The carving has based on a 7th century crucifix bearing elements from both Christianity and pagan traditions. It was interesting to think about a civilization in transition, turning to local materials to express their defining aspirations. What do we turn to? Am I doing it now? Tyler had a amazing volume of research assembled from his Scottish, Ukrainian, Acadian roots. He brought up the topic of food, and talked about the various dishes that defined his understanding of family. I was left hungry for tortiere, the famous French-Canadian meat pie, and also borscht, to which I am no stranger.

Justin navigated us back in a few directions, notably into his Danish past. Focusing on one family group's experience in Denmark, the immigration experience to Canada, and adjustments afterwards, we got a sense of how rites of passage, choice of occupation shaped identity. We heard about Pier 21 (first time for almost the entire class), of course this gives me clue what should be in a subsequent lesson (another bonus to these projects). The "Vikings" were very good at recording their history, thus Justin had two big charts that took his connections back to the 1400s. He also showed us a spoon that his great-x5-grandfather carved from an ox-horn. This was a communal utensil, passed along with a main dish and used by everyone at the table. As one of my colleagues pointed out, the intimacy of food is high on the list with the other things that we do with our body, including learning, and has an enormous potential for grounding our identity and providing significance to other areas of our life.  

I'm thankful for the intimate act of learning that occurred today, in that we allowed carefully researched ideas and faithfully guarded memories to enter our heads and give us pause to reflect on how we got here and how we should now conduct ourselves.

Red Fife

I was giving a lesson yesterday on the big immigration drives during Laurier's time as prime minister (1896-1911) and the work of his minister Clifford Sifton.  My lesson was all over the place, I talked about the CPR and what John A. Macdonald had in mind. I had maps and digital images of "last best west" posters on the go, textbook stuff, a short video clip, asked students to relate the immigration stories they were digging up in the computer lab with their heritage research, etc. We talked about dryland farming, boat rides, sod houses and various people's ancestors (including mine). We found a few of "our people came over" as a result of Sifton's campaigns. I had an recent news story lined up for a current events connection but the streaming video wasn't working on the browser; luckily a student new what I was trying to find (Canadian gov't decision on uniting families of immigrants) and read out another version of the story he found on his iphone. I wanted to introduce them to the concept of critical inquiry benchmarks, thought this was the day to do it, but didn't remember to do it (although I suppose we practiced about 5 of them). Typical chaotic Thielmann lesson, a little bit of everything... yes, some "21C" but lots of 20th Century stand-and-deliver and even "random century" stuff thrown in for good measure (shared story-telling). It bugs me that our educational leaders try to create a divide based on technology where it does not really exist. This lesson is essentially the same as one my father might have given 40 years ago.

Anyways, I made a brief reference to red fife, the wheat that fed Canada until about 1904, and a student chimed in that her family had found a bag of red fife stored in a grandmother's attic. This is interesting, because the original red fife all but disappeared when it fell out of favour in the early 1900s (replaced in large part by Marquis wheat), although it was bred with other varieties to become the "grandfather" to other important wheats. A few farmers have kept the grains, fewer still have kept it growing in small plots, and apparently it has made a bit of a comeback as an heirloom grain with good nutrient and protein characteristics, as a landrace it has an honourable spot in the discussion about genetic diversity and ecological resilience. I imagine few students, especially KT, can envision their great-great-grandparents picking up a bag of red fife grains from caring neighbours at the turn of the 20th century, to begin their Canadian Prairie odyssey. Afterwards, I read through my own "family book" today and realized that this was the same variety of wheat that my great-great-grandfather Jacob Loewen broadcast seeded on his new 160-acre homestead in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, 1902. I think the students "got it" when I tried to explain that even something like food can have a impact on the social and economic development of a nation. Of course we all asked KT "what did you do with the wheat?!" ..."we threw it out -- it had mouse poop in it."

Waffle Tectonics

What a great way to wrap up our unit on earth structure, geology, plate tectonics, faults/folds, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Nick and Nick served up waffles for the class, using each one to demonstrate some kind of plate boundary or fault type before their classmates devoured them. We didn't learn anything new about tectonics, really, didn't need to as this was explored in depth elsewhere, but we did congratulate ourselves for hard work with some great waffles -- crisp golden outside, fluffy and light inside... I skipped the syrup and choc chips with no regrets. It couldn't have tasted better if the gauffre iron were crushed on thorns of fire (I think of this reference to Pattern Language every time I have waffles). After all of the lessons, slideshows, reading, videos, quizzes, and demos in our unit, we've had some fantastic presentations that fulfilled three criteria: deepen our understanding of selected learning outcomes from the unit, reflect the interest & talents of the student as applied to meaningful inquiry, and embody learning in some way -- voice, performance, demonstration, physical construction, etc. Today was a small feast, a celebration of the interesting things we've done over the last 3 weeks, but is was also a celebration of how GOOD students are... I hear a lot of complaints about how students are tuned out and need a contstant barrage of technology to be entertained. This was a nice, slow, quiet... and tasty.