Disgraceful

This term has seen a change. An ill wind has blown in from the sea and brought with it an abundance of food lessons to my timetable. Each lesson is small military operation. Get the kids in. Register them. Get their coats and bags off and out the way. Get them to wash their hands. Get their ingredients out. Get the equipment out. Make the food. Cook it. Clean up. Tell them again to clean up. Stop them eating the food. Get them to clean up properly. Clean up some more. Get them out on the hour then welcome the next class in...

I'm knackered just typing it.

It's tough going. I do really enjoy it though. The worst kids who are normally a nightmare seem to behave like angels (mostly) in the food room. They respond well to me when they realise that I can cook. It's a nice feeling.

Some year nines on Friday were impressed by my fairy cake making. Cracking and whisking eggs, creaming, folding all that jazz.

"Sir are you a professional chef?"

"Erm...well I have worked in a restaurant kitchen"

"Like materchef?"

"Sort of yes."

Hehe. God love them.

The format of the lessons is one hour cooking next lesson evaluate and plan, then cook again fade to pass out on the worktop. The students evaluations are an essential part of the learning process but its a bit laboured at times and they don't really enjoy it for the most part. Some of their answers are quite amusing though. I have to stress to them that they need to use sentences and adjectives and try to use creative language to describe their cooking and tasting experiences. Not easy i can tell you.

In the "My (insert food item) tasted blah blah blah" section of their evaluation one boy had written when describing his fairy cakes:

"My fairy cakes tasted disgraceful."

I love it.

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A year eight boy, who I get on well with and see as quite a mature and old head on young shoulders type, had a big bandage on his wrist in class. During the class I went up to him and asked what had happened. He said that his brother had fractured it.

I was a bit concerned about this and asked him how old his brother was.

Nine years old was the response. Now this lad was 12/13 and so it's a bit of a strange scenario. It turns out his brother ran up behind him and surprised him by pulling his hand back and snapped his wrist. Nasty and unfortunate incident. However he was chuckling about it as he told me so I wasn't so worried anymore. I pictured myself back as that age and what it would be like with a brother.

For some reason unknown to me I asked him "So have you managed to get your own back yet?"

He laughed and said "yeh. I made him a cup of tea and cracked an egg into it so when he got to the bottom he got to drink this slightly cooked runny egg."

Genius.