It Hasn't Stopped Since

It started with a sandwich. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, specifically, one that was made for me, not by me.

I very distinctly remember (which will shock many of you familiar with my usually porous memory), I was in the 4th grade. I do not remember the name of the instructor, but I do remember that it was not my regular 4th grade teacher (Miss Nelson) nor was it the enrichment teacher (Mr. Yencho). I even remember the layout of the classroom.

There were five of us, seated at chairs on the long side of one of the rectangular tables that were common in my elementary school. The instructor had some paper plates, a loaf of bread (sliced, in a bag), a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a butter knife on the table in front of her. She said, "Imagine I'm from another planet. I understand your words, and can do the actions you tell me to. I need you to tell me how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

One kid immediately spoke up, and said, "Well, you put the peanut butter on the bread, and--" and then the instructor picked up the jar of peanut butter and MASHED it down in the middle of the loaf of bread.

We were stunned. She said, "Did I do something wrong? I did exactly what you said!" We all nodded, slowly. Another person said, "You need to take the bread out of the bag, first." So, she moved the peanut butter jar, tore open the plastic on the top of the bag, dumped all the bread slices out, and set the peanut butter jar back on the bread.

We looked at each other. We were uncomfortable being so wrong about how to go about this. The instructor cheerfully said, "Would you like to start over?" We all nodded. She swept the bread off the table into a trash can, and produced another loaf of bread from a grocery bag under the table. She repeated her initial statement about being from another planet.

No one wanted to give the first instruction. We kinda looked around, and then I said, "If I asked you to open the bag from the tied end by untwisting the tie, would you be able to do that?" She smiled, and said, "Yes...but part of the fun of this is doing what you say. The idea is that you say what you mean, and are careful with your words, because words have many different meanings. Checking to see if what you said is what you meant should be done in your head, not by asking me after you say something. Maybe you would like some paper to write things down?" We all did.

We went to work on paper. Some of us wrote numbered lists of steps, others drew pictures on theirs. We talked to ourselves, and we didn't listen very well to what the others were mumbling. The teacher made busy pretending not to listen to us (yes, 4th graders can tell).

After a few minutes, she asked us to finish up. Then she picked someone to go first (it wasn't me), and she would not listen to instructions from anyone else, but we were all welcome to watch, and learn from the others' mistakes. It was a series of mistakes ("Get some jelly from the jar and put it on the bread," and the instructor reached into the jar, and blopped a big scoop of jelly on the bread), corrections ("Stop! Using the knife, get some jelly from the jar."), more mistakes ("Using the knife, get some peanut butter from the jar," and the instructor started to try to pry the lid off the jar), and finally, degrees of success.

When we all had something to eat (I hesitate to call them all sandwiches), we discussed what might have helped us get closer to what we had in mind. Like how to describe the action "spreading," using more adverbs (gently, slowly), and we talked about order (first...then...after that...).

I didn't get a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich that day, none of us did.

What I did get, is I got a brain that started putting value in watching other people so I could learn from their mistakes, in establishing a baseline for understanding, in assuring precision in language, and in critical thinking about problems.

Until another time,
Salt