Teenagers and Chocolate Chip Cookies

On of the most common questions I get, is "how can you stand to teach teenagers", and to be honest I'm not sure how or why.. I just do. But today...today was one of those days...where I wanted to throw in the towel and just have a bunch of runny nosed 3rd graders!

I'll start with my Foods 1 class(es). The topic is FIBER. And we talk about what it does, how much we should have, and how to add more fiber. So the lab is Chocolate Chip Cookies (with half whole wheat flour for the FIBER) This naturally leads to much wailing and nashing of teeth, because "can't we just make regular cookies" and my favorite "I don't eat wheat". I tell them to buck up; it's one cup of whole wheat flour and get over it. ( i may have threatened that they can just read the chapter out of the book on fiber...there isn't one, but they shut up)

So everyone gets to work and one girl notices that the chocolate chips in the container are different colors. I tell her it's because I mix semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips together. I do this for two reasons: 1-I like the different chocolate flavors and textures in the same cookie. and 2-because in groups, half will like milk chocolate and the other half semi-sweet. this chocolate preference has been the cause of many fights in class, so to stop the bickering i just mix the two together. Well this girl does not like milk chocolate, she only wants semi-sweet and basically demands that I accomidate her. Needless to say this FROSTED MY COOKIES! I give her one of my up-down looks and tell her she can pick out the semi-sweet chips. And SHE DID! It took her over 30 minutes, her group was MAD. They didn't freakin' care- they just wanted their cookies.

Next is a girl who is allergic to chocolate. I have some butterscotch chips for her to use. I ask her what type of allergy it is. I mean is she going to go into anaphalactic shock...tummy trouble...what. She whispers that chocolate causes HORMONAL IMBALANCE. So I am thinking, yeah if you DON'T eat chocolate then your imbalanced...it kept that to myself

Now for Foods 2: One of the Utah State objectives is that they "plan, prepare, and evaluate a meal". Last week they planned, all of the groups did a fairly decent job. One group however wanted tuna fish sandwiches and oriental sautee'd mushrooms. I told them that menu didn't really "go" together...they were SOOO offended that I didn't like their idea. After all "you told us we could plan anything" and "we like mushrooms and tuna". Today they made their tuna and sautee'd mushrooms...and they didn't like it. It smelled DISGUSTING and looked worse. Then they wanted to take it to someone to eat and I said (ok yelled), "THAT IS NOT LEAVING THIS ROOM. I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO THINK THAT I CAME UP WITH THAT! I have a rep to protect" This offended them as well, and being teenagers, their response was..." you let us make it".

So I am pondering how many credits do I need to teach elementary?!