Week 3: These Kids Never Learn

In a small school in a small town, my grade was a huge nightmare for our teachers from kindergarten through eighth grade. Since I have to stick to roughly 500 words (I’m sure there’s 500 stories our teachers have about us), I’ll have to focus my attention to one classroom experience we all wish we never had.

Everyone has that one teacher who gets under his or her skin, provoking even the most temperate of students to uncharacteristically lash out. If I could have gotten past the nasally, high pitched New England accent piercing my head on a daily basis then I might have learned a thing or two in my home skills class. However, in 8^th grade the class of 2011 met Mrs. S, a veteran teacher, who sought to instill cooking skills and respectable table manners but instead failed miserably.

Mrs. S paced around the classroom like a 90 year old woman yet she couldn’t have been a day older than 60, a former classmate recalls. The thick lenses of her glasses were perched on her long nose as she gave volatile smile to an unsuspecting eighth grade class on the first day of class. She seemed innocent enough as she filled our heads with the promise of making our own creations in the kitchen during the post-lunch 7^th period.

Somewhere in between that first day of class and the final day before summer recess our classroom took on the persona of a dog pound. It all started when a few classmates ate the dog treats we made for our first kitchen project. Mrs. S would have never noticed if we were discrete about it. “Oh my gawd” she said as she watched one student squatting on all fours with his mouth wide open viciously barking for a treat. If that didn’t enrage our neurotically repetitive teacher who needed to “make sure everything is sanitized,” then our smart mouths and indifferent attitudes towards her class sent her over the edge.

She had an unrealistic expectation that every student in the classroom was mature enough to handle him or herself in a live kitchen. It was only after utensils were stolen, sinks were intentionally left running for hours and an abominations of mac n’ cheese came out of the ovens that Mrs. S decided some students weren’t cut out for culinary excellency. The students who were rightfully booted from washing dishes, fiddling with measuring cups and boiling water missed out on an important lesson:

Just producing something that looked appetizing was an accomplishment.

Making homemade mac n’ cheese is a monumental task for a middle school student. The grating of cheeses, melting of butter, spreading of breadcrumbs all seemed unnecessary when the powder inside the Kraft box turns out a more pleasing mac n’ cheese. After weeks of viewing Mrs. S’s PowerPoint presentations on kitchen safety and step by step mac n’ cheese instructions, we weren’t all that surprised when our mac turned out sub-par. If you get out of a class what you put into it, then we deserved no edible satisfaction.