Comprende teflon?

My dear friend Ann had a classroom story to tell last week. All the better when you consider that a teacher just can't make this stuff up.

Ann has been beside herself lately with the lack of listening skills exhibited by her second grade students. We often vent to each other about how stuff goes in pretty well but comes out sounding a lot like crickets. Ever the intellectuals, we just don't understand why the kids don't process what we try to teach them. Nothing, we complain on the drive home, seems to stick. Except how to clog up the toilet with paper towels or how to spray water all over the floor from the sink.

In frustration, Ann put down her overhead pen the other day, in the middle of a lesson they just weren't getting, and talked to the kids about the importance of LISTENING and keeping what is said IN the brain. Being an engineer by training, Ann wanted the children to remember this important information and went about it scientifically. She decided to use "analogy" as her method and then repeated herself, with much seriousness, "Boys and girls, we want to have VELCRO brains, not TEFLON brains."

Once the crickets clear, she showed the children an example of VELCRO, which just so happens to be on her watchband. She made that hideous velcro noise that all teachers hate and said again, "velcro - this is VELCRO. Things STICK to velcro. We want words and ideas and information to STICK in our brains like VELCRO." She makes the awful noise again with the velcro on her watchband. (When I tried this the next day with my kindergarteners, we never got past the "making noise with velcro" part.)

Then, she added, "Boys and girls, we don't want our brains to be like TEFLON. TEFLON coats a non-stick frying pan." The children assure Ann that they understand the properties of teflon and velcro.

Having finished her explanation and demonstration, she returns to the lesson that was interrupted because of teflon brain activity. Within 10 seconds one of her second graders, Tillie, asks again what she is supposed to do. This, despite the fact that the procedure HAS been explained several times, modeled, and reinforced with the velcro/teflon analogy.

"Tillie," says my dear friend wearily....."WHAT DID I JUST SAY?"

"I don't know," replied the girl, swishing her dark blonde ponytail and fixing Ann with a look of total indignation, "I don't understand Spanish."

:-)