Natalie makes pancakes
For the first part of today, we made and ate pancakes with the Malambo students. After mastering the name “pancakes,” which was difficult for the first graders with whom my group was working, the students started preparing their batches of batter. Arms were covered in flour, kids were picking grains of sugar off the table that had fallen from the spoon too early, and fingers were fishing out dropped egg shells. But what remained most brilliant throughout the morning were the students’ smiles. Their smiles are best described as authentic. Students, who a day earlier ducked behind their neighbors if one of us looked their way, warmly opened up to us, their American counterparts. Since entering Zambia, I have not encountered such warm, genuine, huge smiles on the faces of so many children.
There are two specific moments from the pancake-making workshop that clearly stand out to me. This seemed to be the first graders’ first encounter with maple syrup – sweet, sugary, sticky goo. One student, Britone, cautiously tasted the syrup on the side of his plate before indulging in his mid-day snack. His face lit up with an ear-to-ear smile at the sugary taste. He then took his spoon and dragged it across the top of his pancake to squeeze any maple syrup available onto his spoon to eat by itself. After doing this a couple of times and ending with no more syrup, he looked up to me and held out his plate, asking for more syrup. This was not an uncommon response to this new food we introduced. Across the classroom, students were pointing and eying the syrup, pleading for more, smiling all the while.
Andrew teaches Teacher Kennedy
The second moment was towards the end of the class when I decided to experiment. I started by making very small pancakes, about the size of a dime. This shape-change attracted more students to our portable coal stove. I then started making shapes – triangles, squares, circles – and that attracted even more students. I then changed to making numbers that the students requested. By the end of our pancake workshop, I had so many students standing over me enthusiastically thrusting their bowls and plates into my face that I could no longer see the coal stove. All I could see where their shining, genuine smiles.
Liza, a teacher at Cesar Chavez Public Charter