Of Tuna Fish and Education

So, while I am making tuna fish for our lunch sandwiches one morning, the idea for this post occurred to me. To someone of my generation, home cooking involves simply opening a box and mixing the contents with either water or milk. That, however, was not always the way. Only a generation or two prior, our grandmothers fixed absolutely fabulous meals truly from scratch. In between, people learned to cook by recipes. Great inventions, but something I now believe affected the state of education today.

You see, the recipe was supposed to make it possible for anyone to cook a great meal. One only needed to follow the directions, down to the exact amounts of ingredients to include. Along the way, we came to awe our grandmother's ability to fix meals with no more directions than "a dash of salt" or "a pinch of flour".

So here I am standing in my kitchen making tuna fish for lunch. I'm not saying this to brag, but it was completely without a recipe. I did what I've done many times: mix together the tuna, 2 eggs, "some" mustard and "a little more than some" mayonnaise. If the mixture looked too yellow, I added more mayo. If it was too white, I added a bit more mustard.

That is when it hit me. I was problem solving right there in the kitchen just like I expect my students to learn to do. The era of cooking by recipes and standardized testing (among other things) has ushered in a generation to whom learning is synonymous with memorizing steps. As teachers, we seem to constantly fight to get students to think on their own, but they regularly want to gravitate back to the cookie cutter approach with which they seem to be most comfortable.

I even had a colleague a couple of years back who had a student say, "Don't teach me how to do this problem. Just SHOW me it." Learning to him was memorizing a set of steps to solve a particular problem instead of looking at what was given and creating a solution from what he had available. If the problem changed or was presented in a different manner, then he would have to memorize a completely different set of instructions.

It turns out that my grandmother was one one of the most educated people I would ever encounter, but I never realized it at the time.

As you go about your daily life, look for ways to throw out the recipe. Try something new and creative - especially something that you don't have a recipe for. Sit back and evaluate,or "What would make this better?" or "What is available to me to work with?" Along the way, you just might resurrect the long lost art of problem solving.

Here goes Nothin'

Ok. I am going to finally try this out. I've been thinking about it for a while now. I even started it a time or two but never got this far before. I did have one excursion in to this brave new world with my classes late last year. However, this is going to be much bigger than that - or at least that is how I have it in my mind.

What am I talking about? Well, this blog, of course. When I got in to teaching, it was with a fervent belief that the teaching profession was going to undergo a radical change and that I wanted to be a part of it. Blogging was not quite what I had in mind, but I do think that teaching looks very different today than it did even 4 years ago.

The amount of information given to us regarding blogs, "cloud computing", online learning communities, etc. has increased dramatically over the past 2 years. I believe that it has gone from a novelty that a few would adopt to extensive training and encouragement, leading "several" teachers to take the leap with their classrooms. It's not easy, even for a tech lover such as myself. It is hard to give up the familiar and known for something new and (personally) un-tested. Still, eventually, I give in to the wave of technology that is pushing me out to sea. This blog, is just one among many new steps that I am taking this year.

If you want to join in, then comment on my posts; follow my blog; and follow other similar blogs. I hope that you will join me on the journey.