Lab Lessons

I have held labs for 125 students all week - shopping for $500 worth of groceries -- I'm worn out with labs -- and have one more week to go. We go to the grocery store before this final lab to explore unit pricing and making decisions on a budget. The students love lab experiences and they seem to apply themselves more to the other assignments I give, knowing they'll get their time in the lab to prove their culinary genius.

So many times I have to ask my students when the prepared product fell short of the picture in the cookbook - What did we learn from this?  

Essentially, labs in food prep prepare them to be pretty good cooks at the end of six weeks -- well not chef status -- but at least sous chef.
 
Though we do various activities to illustrate concepts - like creating mock families, building their own "house" out of craft objects, holding a mock wedding and managing a mock budget --I have often thought how valuable it would be to be able to create labs for some of the other life situations they might have to face -- relationship break-ups,  financial bail-outs when they have ruined their credit, facing serious illness or picking themselves up when they have given into something more powerful than they realized.

I started my life skills course by saying -- I want you to not just SURVIVE - but THRIVE! I tell them they are on the front porch of the rest of their lives and I don't want them to live SCARED -- but SMART. When they make a mistake in lab -- I often ask, "and what did you learn from THAT?" My seniors will be graduating soon.-- I hope I have them well prepared --I guess the question I should ask myself now about my course instruction is and "And what did they learn from THIS?"