I love to cook. I think it is a creative outlet for me, but like a lot of people, cooking is one of the ways that I can show love and/or gratitude to people, to a community—through the food. Over the last few months, I have been doing a book study with my department using Soup: A Recipe to Create a Culture of Greatness by Jon Gordon. It is an easy read because it written as a story to give the reader inspiration and tips “to build a winning team and create a culture of greatness”.
Imagine making some soup and all of the ingredients and steps that you would need to make it. Now think of making soup as an analogy for a team. Each ingredient is what a person on your team or in you school brings to the pot. I would even go as far to have you imagine stirring the soup. Does it matter who is stirring and caring for the soup? Would it taste any different? The answer is yes, it would taste different depending on who is making it.
Put it this way. Do you have a favorite meal or food that someone prepares for you? This person might be a relative or even a chef at a restaurant. Have you tried to remake it and found that the food did not taste the same? You followed the recipe and used the same ingredients. What could have made the difference? Jon Gordon tells us that “no matter how carefully different chefs follow the same recipe, the final product always varies a little bit. Even if two chefs do everything exactly the same way, the meal will always come out a little differently. Who stirs the pot has an impact on what’s in the pot” (20).
Tom Wujec share in his TED Talk, “Build a Tower-Build a Team,” the success he has had in doing a team building exercise using marshmallows, dried spaghetti, string, and tape. Essentially, the Marshmallow Challenge asks a team to build a tower using these ingredients. What unfolds is an opportunity to work together, let individuals shine using their needed skills, and practice problem-solving and design thinking.
My favorite part of this whole presentation is that Tom shares with us that graduating Kindergarteners consistently perform well. We can learn a lot from our young learners because they have not been programmed yet to under score their value or others.
If there is anything that I want, it is for you to walk away with the message that YOU ARE THE SECRET INGREDIENT. We often get lost in the grind (building that tower), and we are overwhelmed by schedules and deadlines. For some reason, we as teachers fall into a pattern of forgetting all of the unique things we add to culture and work at our schools. One of the characters in Gordon’s book reminds us that we are the number one ingredient in anything we make and what we put into something is important (Gordon 19). Post that reminder somewhere if you need to and never forget it.
See You Real Soon,
Erin
Interested in doing the Marshmallow Challenge? You can find the instructions here.
