david taus

Fajitas Con Pollo De Dissection

music: Fruit Bats- Spelled in Bones

It’s been about a year since Volker pronounced Missa Toss his hero for turning a chicken wing dissection for biology class into a meal. It’s an idea excellent in concept, but harder to really get into in execution. As roommates then would attest, things did not work out all that well stir-fry wise. This year, with the same activity on the horizon, Missa Toss came up with some improvements to the procedure. Today the plan was executed, and by all accounts it was a success.

The biggest change was to pre-cook all the chicken wings before giving them to kids for dissection. This made it easier to peel the meat off the bones, as well as ensured that everything was safe for eating. Then, instead of bringing the meat home and making dinner for my roommates I brought some veggies and a wok into class, borrowed a hot plate from the physics teacher, and did the stir-frying right in class. I went Mexican this time, adding some lime, jalapeno, cilantro, and garlic to the chicken, onions, and peppers. All that was needed after that were tortillas, cheese, and salsa. Easier than cooking dinner for 6 at Chowdahaus. Today biology students did a dissection, saw that everything in nature gets recycled, and got a lunch out of it.

Some teachers even popped by for food once they smelled it, and quite enjoyed their fajitas. I didn’t tell them that their lunch was made from the remnants of a dissection.

There were some ugly moments in there, mostly due to other kids trying to push their way into scoring a free lunch. Who can blame them? Many are forced to eat school lunch every day, which my principal (who has been in Boston Public Schools for over 35 years) says is the worst he’s had. It reminded me that food is really the source of interpersonal capital and the root of a society’s power structure, as well as being an amazing motivator. But to use food as a reward, especially for kids who are signed up for free school lunch, is highly unethical.

The difference between General Tso’s Dissection of last year and Fajitas Con Pollo De Dissection this year is a pretty good gague of how I’m doing this year as compared to last. In Biology at least. The Behavioral Science classes, while exhilirating, are an enormous challenge. It’s incredibly hard to build a curriculum from the ground up, and I find that I’m losing sight of the bigger picture for the sake of what has to get done for tomorrow. The kids are struggling as well, although I suspect that it’s mostly because they thought they could get away with talking about their feelings for a year. Now that they realize they have to learn some genetics and neuroanatomy they are balking; three dropped the class just this week. No matter. Those that remain will benefit greatly, and in ways that extend beyond grade point averages (which might not be that great…). Teaching, I realize, is a lot like cooking. With appropriate amounts of recipe and improvisation you can turn the waste products of a mundane activity into a nourishing meal.