A Watched Pot

From my treasure trove of obvious yet incredibly helpful/oft overlooked tips:

If your lab requires a large pot of boiling water, start the water for your students 15-20 minutes before class begins. Otherwise, they will spend half of the class period looking at the pot and waiting - that is, of course, assuming that they remember to start the water right away. It's not even necessary to fill the pots yourself; you could have the kids fill and cover them the day before during your lab prep.

Perhaps you are like I once was and you think to yourself "But I want for them to learn time management, how to fit together all the steps," blah, blah, blah. Screw it. Start the water, save yourselves the stress.

And while you're at it, preheat the ovens too. It's not like boiling water and preheating ovens are skills you have to continually review (yes, I know, you've got that one kitchen that still can't remember how to set up dish water, but you've just got to accept that and move on), and this will prevent a lot of stress and aggravation.

Exception: if you have block scheduling, I imagine you have time for the kids to do all this on their own. A couple of times a year I arrange for an "in-school" field trip where I have my Foods class for two consecutive class periods so we can actually cook a meal, eat, and clean all in one session - during these times, I don't start anything for them. But when you've got under 50 minutes for your labs, you've got find ways to save time and heartache.

"Smoke" & Mirrors

I love Snoopy; if you've spent some time here, you already know that.

I hate mirrors in my classroom. Hate hate hate. High schoolers are waaaaay too preoccupied with their appearance for mirrors to be anything other than an opportunity for frequent disruption.

So when I moved back into my current classroom, there was a mirror on the wall toward the front of the class. Unacceptable. So, I covered it with a poster - a SNOOPY poster, nonetheless!

How great is that?

I hung the poster about a month ago (previously the A/V cart was blocking it), and have been enjoying it immensely. Especially the fact that it eliminated the mirror.

And then yesterday a group of students told me that there had been rumors circulating that I'm a regular pot smoker - because of the poster.

Seriously! Oh, kids...

Generic Brands & Foods Labs

You know the kids who loudly declare "Ugh, nasty!" every time they see a generic-brand-whatever on the ingredient table? Yeah, that's not annoying. I've found my life is easier to just disguise the packaging, rather than attempting a logical conversation about frugality.

Generic Parmesan, before:

Parmesan cheese, after:

No one knew the difference, muahahahaaa.... Along with removing the labels, don't forget to ALWAYS open the packages yourself.

For some items, it's best just to move the food to a completely different container: bowls, canisters, etc. For our fettucine lab this week, not only did I hide the generic pasta by eliminating the boxes, but I saved on both food cost and food waste by not giving each group a full container of pasta. Instead of 5 lb for 5 kitchens I purchased three, then divvied it up between them. There's still plenty for all group members to get a decent helping, and there were minimal leftovers - ideal. Over the course of the years I've become more and more successful at whittling down recipes to "just enough" for groups to eat in class. 

I'm not the only one whose kids tend to freak out over generics, right?

FACS Teachers: Supply and Demand

Hello all! Great blog post here about the current need for FACS teachers. Happy Wednesday!

http://facslove.blogspot.com/2014/04/family-and-consumer-sciences-teachers.html?m=1