Creating a New Culture of Learning
This week as I took a break from our Thanksgiving preparations, I watched a quick documentary from Netflix’s Chef’s Table about a pastry chef named Christina Tosi. As I was watching this show, I couldn’t help but connect the ideas of A New Culture of Learning.
How does Christina Tosi’s career reflect A New Culture of Learning?
It’s how she was able to create unique desserts through learning from her surroundings. Tosi comes from a generation of matriarchs who bake as a collective, and through a scene of the Chef’s Table, you’re able to see that collective group baking and tasting each dessert. They teach each other, the younger generations, and even Tosi about the complexity and history of their desserts.
Through her upbringing in her family’s collective of bakers, Tosi went on to study at a culinary school to become a pastry chef but also working at top restaurants learning and absorbing the lessons of the kitchen.
Following Tosi’s career through the documentary, Tosi created amazing desserts based on the environment around her, she was able to play and mess around with ingredients to produce cookies, brownies, and even an unbelievable pie for her collective and allow them to experience and provide feedback to allow her to create better desserts.
Before Tosi built Milk Bar, her very own confection heaven of a company, Tosi was moved into a different culture helping Momofuku, a renowned New York City restaurant.
Through her adaptation of a new culture, she was able to still play and engage with the ingredients around her. She created desserts such as Miso Crack Pie and her own spin of a Strawberry Shortcake. Tosi was able to engage in her collective, culture and her community.
Within her engagement of community, she was pushed to even create the Cereal Milk Panna Cotta.
Cereal Milk Panna Cotta came from the practice of Tosi going to a 24 hour bodega and looking over different types of spices, food products for inspiration. In her journey through the food aisle, she was determined to reinvent the panna cotta for Momofuku. She knew panna cotta was a milk based dessert, but she understood the atmosphere of Momofuku. In order to create something radical, she had to experiment with changing a simple dessert.
As she came upon the cereal aisle, and she reminisced over the childhood delight of drinking the milk from the cereal bowl, the idea to change the milk flavor of a panna cotta to a cereal milk flavor was born. And like magic, Cereal Milk Panna Cotta became a dessert dish featured on Momofuku’s menu and the catalyst for Tosi to open up Milk Bar.
Christina Tosi's story taught me about how her new culture of learning was through significant learning environments and her ability to use indwelling to help her move towards these steps to success. Milk Bar wouldn't be what it is now without her imagination and her experiences through those unique environments.
Christina Tosi is my hero. Mostly because before she became this amazing pastry chef, she was a learner. A learner in her mother and grandmother's kitchens, a learner in a culinary school, a learner in the first restaurant she worked at, and a learner at Momofuku. The methods in the ways she learned varied from teacher based instruction to real world influences. Never the same method, each environment allowed her to create and imagine desserts in her own way.
Although a pastry chef, I feel like her journey to becoming the founder of Milk Bar has significant learning moments that learners can be inspirational. Her content of study is something that is quite different than our students' content, but there is real passion behind her work and learning. If students are able to use their passion to learn then the possibilities are endless.
As I reviewed through my Innovation Implementation Plan and thought about how I could create a new culture of learning and provide a significant learning environment, I struggled with the concepts. After watching Chef's Table and reading A New Learning Culture, I feel a renewed sense of purpose for my plan.
My tutorial program was about teaching students to develop skills they are weak in through an individualized blended learning plan. Am I creating a new learning culture? Not really, the ideas are new and plan is new but it doesn't quite allow students enough ownership in their learning. Thinking back on the simple notion that students spend their time finding the answers are not really developing their skills.
In A New Learning Culture, it was proposed that instead of starting with the question for students, how about teachers start with the answer and allow students to develop the questions. Allow students to start with the answer will allow them to find the questions within their passions.
In the example of Chef's Table episode, Christina Tosi started with the answer: to develop a dessert. She knew the unique dessert was going to be a type of panna cotta, but she created the questions of how she was going to create this unique dessert that matched the uniqueness of Momofuku. Her questions led her to that 24 hour bodega, and to the cereal aisle then to create the Cereal Milk Panna Cotta. Tosi used her passion for pastries to thrive her imagination to create.
If students are allowed the same opportunity as Christina Tosi, they would be able to create their skills in certain contents through their passions. If teacher posed the answers only, students can search different avenues to create questions to build their imagination for learning.
Looking at my program, I wouldn't simply use the answer to the test but the skill would the answer. If the students start their tutorial program learning about the skills, then they would be able to research through their passions to develop questions about those skills. They would be able better understand the concept skills a little bit better through understanding with the topics they're expertise in.
Using a collective group in a learning management system like Canvas or Google Classroom, will allow students to develop a group that will allow them to ask each other questions even provide solutions to each other based on those concepts. This will allow individualized plans to be more about the individual, and allow teachers to really work with concepts that are of high interest to students.
The only issue that would be considered main challenges is letting go of the control of the classroom and providing students with more freedom to search their avenues. If we can get teachers to let go of control to the students and also build individual initiative for students that allow them to drive themselves to learn then learning is attainable.
In my organization, we are focused on the idea of building rigor in our school. I think this would be a great next step to allow students to build that rigor by allow them creative control and developing a learning environment made up of their passions. I have seen when choice is given to students; learning is at its highest point of rigor, and students find enjoyment in their learning.
In order for this to truly be a success and allow others to think broadly, they have to see the model of it done in the classroom. Inviting educators to see this being used successful will allow them to become more open-minded to the concepts of thinking broadly and holistically. Educators have to become learners when thinking about these broad ideas. I feel that this perspective is what serves best for me, if I think like a learner, how do I want to approach subjects that will be beneficial to my learning. I would want to be able research ideas that would match those concepts. After all, that's how I understood the new culture of learning from Christina Tosi.
Reference
Gelb, D. (2018). Chef's table: Volume 4 pastry: Christina Tosi [video file]. Retrieved from www.netflix.com
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