There once was a class of middle school writing students who were terribly behaved around food of any kind. After school they acted as if they’d been starved for days, rushing up and edging one another out of the way so they could get at the table laden with bags of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, and Snyder’s pretzels. One would imagine they had just come off a 10 day trek on the Gobi desert by the way they ripped open the plastic loops holding the water bottles. As they gingerly negotiated the classroom desks getting back to their own, their 13 year old hands overflowed with eight or ten cookies (Were they hypoglycemic?), three or four pretzels (Were they salt deprived?) Then once seated (and that was a tricky business if they’d pushed their chairs back under their desks) each child stacked and sorted their loot in his or her own way upon the napkin I’d placed there. Some stacked their cookies six high, some in short stacks of two or three. Either way they wiped out the snacks on the snack table within minutes. It was a frantic and chaotic business at the start of every club meeting.
Reminding them to share and slow down made absolutely no difference. These young writers were deaf to me and to the other two teachers who coordinated this Young Writers’ afterschool program for adolescents who actually love to write. This love of writing made them anomalies of their Title I middle school. They were the smart ones, the ones who loved to read and write and talk about fiction and poetry with one another. They were a polite and serious group of over-achievers, so their uniquely sensitive behavior juxtaposed to their Darwinian behavior when it came to cookies was hard to fathom. Why did they greedily and without regard for one another attack the snacks I brought each week? Were they truly that hungry? Or was it something else?
We teachers tried sending them to the snack table one or two at a time, but this strategy left the last students with the broken bits and only one or two whole cookies a piece. We said over and over again, “Remember your friends are hungry, too. Only take two cookies and two pretzels at a time.” This sort of worked. But as soon as our attention shifted to working with the student writers individually, their club-mates stealthily made their way to the snack table and grabbed as many cookies and pretzels as they could without our noticing.
After several weeks of watching this weekly drama unfold, I decided to come up with a plan. I wasn’t sure what this plan would be, but I was determined to change this uncivil and uncivilized behavior. But how?
That very weekend of my resolution, I was visiting my Dad to help him sort out our family home filled with 50 plus years of stuff. My mother had died a few months earlier. As we worked together on the kitchen cabinets, we came upon the tray cabinet which held 5 trays. My Dad asked, “Would you like the tray your mother won at a golf tournament?” I said, “Yes, absolutely!” Next to us, my mother’s passion was golf. And so, I left that Sunday afternoon with the only golf prize my mother ever won – a brand new plexi -glass tray.
And so that next week when I awoke as usual at 4:00 AM thinking about work or children or both, it suddenly came to me, an epiphany, “Use a tray for our Young Writers’ club”. Yes – I would serve them their snacks, water, and napkins on a tray. In this way, they would be honored and taught at the same time. I was so excited to try it.
The other two teachers thought the tray was a good idea too so that Wednesday, I brought the usual Oreos, Chips Ahoy, pretzels, and water along with the unusual, my tray. As the teachers and I unloaded the snacks, I explained to the children that I would be serving them their snacks on this tray. They watched as I opened the cookie containers and the pretzel bag and placed them in the middle of the tray. Next, I stacked the napkins in one corner and lined up the water bottles in the other. It all fit, perfectly!
With the two slotted handles, it was easy to carry the tray around the room stopping at each child’s desk and asking, “Would you care for a snack?” That first time, they looked questioningly at me as they stretched out their hand to the cookie container, asking out loud or silently with their eyes, “how many?” In response, I said, “Let’s take two cookies now, and I’ll be around again a little later.” The effect was instant. These grabbing, gobbling children became 19th century drawing room aristocrats, ever so slowly and carefully taking one or two cookies, a napkin, a pretzel, and water. As if we’d always had our snacks in this way, they spontaneously said, “yes, please” when offered the tray and “thank you” as I moved on to the next student. It was magic to see and hear their transformation from ruffians to refined gentlefolk.
Now eight months later, the tray has worked even better than I’d imagined. It brings out the best parts in our young writers: the civil, caring part. They love the tray and being waited on. Now when the students want more, they ask if I’m coming around again soon. And so, this tray won by my mother at a golf tournament at a fancy country club has traveled to a very different place, a place filled with children who love to write. Each week as I set up the tray with snacks, I thank my mother for giving me this great idea. Because of an afternoon spent cleaning out her kitchen cabinets, I discovered a simple and elegant way to change our student’s weekly snack attack. Who’d have thought it?
Seeking The Wild 