Food on the Brain

At five o'clock today Jeff and I were halfway through a professional development course about cognitive mapping and helping students connect ideas and retain information. Tomorrow we will begin applying what we have learned to our own curriculum, but the last two days have been about learning to use nine kinds of concept maps (aka graphic organizers) with non-academic information. You might see where this is going, and you'd be right. I spent today practicing mapping techniques dealing with food. As you might imagine, this was not the topic of choice for our presenters. They favor topics that are school related but not necessarily part of the curriculum. Being a good and dutiful student, I followed directions carefully yesterday. However, today I just needed a change of scenery.

Case in point is this beauty, called a "defining map."  This is used for brainstorming purposes. The idea is to put a topic in the middle and then jot down as many ideas as possible relating to that topic. While I was supposed to be creating an example of things associated with a successful student, all I could see was a donut which gave me the idea of filling my circle with treats that are near and dear to my heart. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. After all, I only had about a minute to write down what came to mind, and everyone else was conversing about successful students - so distracting!

The next map we learned about was a "describing map" which is similar to the first one, but more focused. Since I had already started down the primrose path, I saw no option but to continue with my food theme. Thus, I chose my favorite treat - potato chips - and started filling in as many descriptors as possible in under a minute. This was extremely difficult since I spent the first 30 seconds contemplating how yummy a bag of potato chips would be at that exact moment. Then, too, I had to consider whether or not I would describe chips in general or a specific brand and flavor. There were too many decisions and the clock was ticking! Finally, I settled on some general descriptors thinking I would get a chance to explore this topic more fully with a different mapping technique. (At least, that was my hope.)

By the time we practiced the "compare/contrast map," I was getting hungry. All this talk of food - especially potato chips - was beginning to take its toll. (Mind you, no one else was talking about food, but I've never been afraid to talk to myself.) You're probably wondering, "What about Jeff? Didn't he talk to you?" While he, too, was ignoring the basic procedure his thoughts were occupied with something constructive - the music theory curriculum. When I ever-so-sweetly reminded him that we were directed to master our use of the maps on non-curriculum related materials, he simply tapped his fingers on my beautifully color-coded map and pointed to the prompt I was supposed to be using, which was to compare and contrast effective and ineffective teachers. At that moment my first thought here was that the incompetent ones get paid as much as I do, so I decided to stick with chocolate.

When we began an example of the "classifying map," the instructors - who had been meandering around the other side of the room - managed to find their way to our table. The first one who came by admonished me to "stay with the group." I sighed inwardly remembering all the elementary teachers I had who always wanted me to follow along during reading and color inside the lines. I pointed out that I had completed all the maps we had covered so far in my notes, and (much to my delight) a friend from my school mentioned that I had contributed regularly to the group discussions. (Nyah!) I considered sticking out my tongue behind her back, but decided against it. Interestingly enough, when the second instructor ambled by, she found my food musings amusing. We even discussed some of her favorite dishes, cooking, and where she was from (Tennessee, of course!).

At break time Jeff and I broke out some sandwiches and yogurt to fuel our brain-based thinking endeavors. This served us well as we moved to the "whole to part map" for which I used the ingredient label on my Yoplait. Of course the "sequencing map" just screamed recipe to me, so I couldn't resist. When we began the "cause and effect map" I decided to consider the basic idea of loving food. What caused me to feel this way? What happens if  I love it too much? While, these are deep philosophical questions of which I only skimmed the surface in my two or three minutes to construct the entire map, I must say that the darkest effect is weight gain. (Ugh!) Moving to the decision-making map was easy. This is a grid used to list choices, factors, and ratings based on a pre-determined scale. Of course, the choices had to be dinner party menu themes which I examined in light of factors like cost, preparation time, persnickitiness of ingredients, and potential guests. Even Jeff weighed in on this one ranking some of the choices to skew the results in favor of a dessert buffet. (I know you would never have guessed he'd do such a thing!). Finally, we ended the day with the "relating map" which is a variation on basic analogies. I used this to sum up my feelings about spending the day with Jeff and contemplating my favorite subject - food.