Gingerbread People

Every Christmas my sister and I mix up a batch of gingerbread. The colorful men and women bring a splash of personality to the cookie assortments that we share with friends and family. Sift the flour with plenty of ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and a dash of baking powder. Cream the shortening, molasses, brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Then, with a strong hand stir it all together into a pliable dough. Roll it out evenly onto a floured surface and try not to make a mess as you cut all the little gingerbread men and bake them on a parchment lined cookie sheet, in perfect rows. Each little gingerbread man, cut from the same cookie cutter, identical in shape, size, and flavor...or are they?

When you mix dough by hand, there is no guarantee that you'll end up with a perfectly homogeneous blob, with each teaspoon of dough having the exact same concentration of each ingredient. You might have a pocket with a bit more fat. This pocket will create a flatter and more spread out gingerbread person. You might have a pocket with a bit more baking powder. He might puff up a little bit. The pocket with a higher concentration of cinnamon and ginger will be spicy! The one with a bit more molasses will be darker in color. The one with more sugar will be crisper in texture, but sweeter.

When you roll out the dough, it won't be perfectly even. We're only human, right? Some sections will be thicker and bake into softer gingerbread people. The sections that are thinner will bake into crunchier gingerbread people.

Sometimes, when you move a gingerbread person from the floured surface to the cookie sheet a leg breaks off. You might try to mend it but a scar will always be left behind. My sister and I usually bake a few of our gingerbread people with limbs missing. They taste just as good as the others!

Next you put your people in the oven. Ovens are imperfect machines. Mine seems to get much hotter in the back. The cookies that undergo their heat induced chemical transformation back there come out darker than the ones that cook in the front.

Then, it comes time to decorate them. This is when the gingerbread person gets to become whoever they want to be. My sister and I take this to a whole new level. We've had doctors, athletes, punk rock stars...we've even had a Donald Trump cookie. They can be men, women or somewhere in between. They can dress flashy or dull. They might even be gingerbread reindeer! (Yes...we have made gingerbread reindeer from the same cookie cutter).

We're all familiar with the idea of the "cookie-cutter" metaphor: things which are identical, that have the same configuration. If we treat all students as if they came from the same "cookie cutter" than we have a stale classroom, with prescribed assignments and activities, a lack of differentiation. Essentially, if we have this belief, we teach in one way without even trying to find the differences between our students. Who has a bit more molasses? Who was baked in the back of the oven?

If even gingerbread people, which LITERALLY come from the same cookie cutter can look and taste wildly different from one another than we need to take this metaphor with a grain of salt. We are all unique individuals. I am Emma. You are you. While the labels that we identify with are important we are not defined by them. We are some unique combination of shortening and molasses, of location in the oven, of thinness or lumpiness of dough. We may come from the stuff, the same cookie cutter but I might decorate myself as a math teacher while you decorate yourself as an artist.

The uniqueness of individuals permeates my thoughts of my role as a teacher, my future role as curriculum coordinator, and my role as a human.

As a teacher, I think that at the heart of every successful class is an understanding that every student is unique and special. I could go on and on about the important of differentiation. If you regularly follow my blog, you know that I put a high priority on offering my students a plethora of options for the way they learn, the pace they learn it, and the medium they use to express their learning. While I think this differentiation should not be downplayed, I want to emphasize a more human side of recognizing uniqueness in our students. They not only learn in different ways but they express themselves differently, they play different roles on a collaborative team, they react differently to vulnerability and challenge and most importantly they have different stories. It is worth taking the time to hear their stories. Through this understanding we create trust and a healthy classroom community.

Here’s a story. I have struggled with an anxiety disorder and intermittent panic attacks for my entire life. I always saw this as a weakness and I tried to hide it as best as I could. When I became a teacher, I certainly did not want my students to see me in such a moment of vulnerability. But, we cannot hide forever, One night during study hall a panic attack overcame me. I started sweating and hyperventilating in front my students. The anxiety was compounded by the fact that they could see me in one of my worst moments. When I finally overcame it two girls came up to me, offered me water and told me that they regularly had panic attacks too. We talked about it for a bit, sharing stories of particularly memorable moments. One of these girls had not been doing well in my class. She was often disengaged and when I asked her if she needed help she would shake me off. The next day in class she called me over and asked a question. While this may sound small, a river of warmth came bubbling forward in me. By showing my vulnerability and understanding hers we connected on a deeper level. She was finally comfortable to be in my class. My goal as a teacher is to connect with kids, to be a part of their development. You can’t have an impact on a person you don’t even know.

As curriculum coordinator, one of my goals is to honor the uniqueness in my peers. I think there is a misconception that as we age we become more similar to one another, we at least treat adults as if they are the same. We have the same expectations for what they can accomplish, the same guidelines and rules for them, we offer the same professional development. This is very counterintuitive to me. As we age, shouldn’t we actually become even more different from one another? The cookies with more sugar get stale more slowly. The cookies left on the counter become hard as rocks. The cookies that get wet might even grow mold. We all have experiences throughout life that shape us and change our views of the world. The older we are, the more experiences we have had. It is just as important to recognize the differences between adults as with young people. I hope to get to know my faculty even better, to take the time to learn their natural teaching styles, their comfort zones, their strengths, their weaknesses. I don’t want to guide each teacher in a prescripted way toward a school initiative. I want help them harness their strengths and forge their own path toward the initiative that they can own. It all comes back to authenticity. If we are true to ourselves we be the best versions of ourselves.

“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.” -Maya Angelou.