What did I learn from making French Fries for 3 hours?

Our school had the opportunity to work at McDonald’s today for a fundraiser.  We had to work for only three hours.  Some teachers were at the front counter.  Some were walking around trying to sell pies and cookies.  I was on the fries.  There were two other teachers with me.  The only task  I needed to do was put the basket of fries into the fryer, push a button, when it beeped shake the basket and put it back into the fryer, then when it beeps again take the fries out and let it drain a little.  Finally I dumped it into the pan for the other two teachers to salt and dish them into their containers.  That was it.  There was a little machine that put the fries into the basket automatically.

So what does this have to do with education?  Besides the fact I made a promise to myself when I was in High School that I would never work at a Fast Food place.  Although it was only 3 hours, I was dreading the night, but it was good for our school.  We made a lot more than I make in three days of teaching.  As the night went on, I let my mind think about things and one of the things I thought about was, “How can I make this experience benefit my educational pursuits?”  I was thinking more how I could use what I witnessed and thought about as making me a good administrator, but it is also had some “teacher” lessons here.  This is what I am going to talk about.

Although what seems like a simple task, making fries is and can be a tough job.

The first thing I found out was you need to pay attention.  You need to know what beeps mean and what the words on the fryer mean.  There were two different fryers for the fries.  One fryer would say “Shale” and the other would say “Duty” at times.  Both of those words meant that I needed to shake the basket.  If you are not paying attention, you might ruin the fries.  In school we need to pay attention to the students if we don’t read the signs our students are giving us, we might ruin them or lose them in a very important learning opportunity.

The next thing was you need to keep remaining fries away from the new fries.  That is pretty self explanatory, but it goes with the first fries made, the first fries served.  In education we need to take care of the tasks students do not understand before we move on to new concepts.  Master a concept before we let a student move on and be lost with the students that are on new material.

The third thing I learned was you need to adapt and adjust.  This was the hardest part of the night.  You never want to have too many fries and you never want no fries.  You have to go with the flow.  Each batch of fries took about 3 mins to make.  Some times fries could fly out of the waiting section and at times they can be just sitting there.  One part of the night I got finished making 6 batches.  The fries sat for a few mins, and we didn’t have any more room to put the fires into their containers, and in no time they started to go very fast, so I added another 8 batches to replace the ones we just sent out.  As soon as I was done making that last batch, no one else got fries the rest of the time we were there.  So we were sitting on a lot of fries.  As a teacher we need to be adaptable!  We have to go with the flow of what our students are ordering.  We need to give them concepts and projects as they need and want them.  We can’t overboard them with work all the time and we can’t give them no assessments.  It is a fine line.

The next concept I learned goes with the whole making sure we have enough fries but not too much.  According to McDonald’s rules every 7mins you need to get rid of the old fries.  They are outdated and stale.  I think you can see where I am going here for education.  We need to get rid of our old and stale methods.  If you are teaching exactly the same the last 5,10,15,20,40 years it is time to change out the fries and make some new ones.

The last thing I learned was things don’t always go as plan.  I mention earlier that there was a machine to put the fries in the basket automatically.  Well, I found that machine isn’t always reliable.  Maybe it was the grease and fry particles floating around, but this machine would fail every so often.  So you had to troubleshoot a little and take time to get it back on track.  Not to mention you needed to refill it after so many baskets.  In school we know lesson plans don’t always go as plan.  Some teachers can’t deal with this, others need  to deal with this.  If the fry machine stopped working, we could still make fries, I could fill the baskets myself, but that would not be feasible for my time.  This goes with technology in the classroom.  Many teachers don’t want to shift because maybe technology will go down and they think it is easier for them to do it themselves.  Recently I moved my spelling tests to the computer.  I use Spelling City (http://www.spellingcity.com) to administer my tests.  This online program will say the word, say a sentence, and then grade the work.  While students take turn taking their spelling test we work on other projects or reinforce some concepts we are having trouble with.  As a teacher I need to troubleshoot not just technology issues, but troubleshoot students.  Especially in third grade, the students do not always know why they don’t understand something or why they get a problem wrong.  I have to troubleshoot their thought process to help them understand.  Plus sometimes you need to do the maintenance or take the time to create a project for the students, to make your lessons more engaging.

It was an amazing opportunity for me to learn something new and in the end, when everything works the fries taste amazing, just like when in education things go the way you plan about the students turn out amazing.  So go into your classrooms and make some great student fries!