Stirring Up the Soup Pot by Julie

Stirring Up the Soup Pot by Julie - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

If I were to give a teacher a small bit of advice to help me learn, I would simply tell them to keep stirring the soup pot. Just like any masterpiece recipe, a soup from a fine restaurant must start with quality ingredients. Separately, the ingredients already have their own purpose and taste. However, together the ingredients may spark an umami experience which will set off a spark of tasteful flavor. Each student in their class is like a fine ingredient prior to going into the soup pot. Each student is unique and capable of great potential on their own. Your students will need opportunities to work together on real-life projects to experience new things that they may experience in the work place. They will need opportunities to become a team or “harmonious blend” while you are stirring up real-life opportunities for them to learn together.

While stirring the ingredients in the soup pot, the ingredients become intrigued. You may add a little salt and pepper for seasoning and extra flavor. The salt is not to mask the flavor of the ingredient, but to draw out what is already there in the ingredient. The pepper is separate from the salt as it activates the senses of the taster. The pepper may be undesirable to the taster and cause the person to have an adverse reaction.

The salt in the soup can be compared to the teacher taking their time to get to know the student. What is special about them? What mechanisms will need to be used to draw out the best learning experience for the student? As the teacher already knows, the student already has capabilities to learn. The teacher just needs to figure out how they will learn best by testing them on their learning style (visual, auditory, etc.). The teacher could also spend time with the student to see what makes them interested in a particular subject to relate better to the students.

The pepper in the soup could represent the challenging work given that may be temporarily unpleasant to the student. The challenges are not placed to harm the student but to help them learn how to deal with obstacles. There will be obstacles in the real world. They will need challenging experiences to know how to overcome the future obstacles.

I hope the teacher will continue to “keep stirring the soup pot” and make each student’s learning experience unique to bring out their best potential and prepare them for future work experiences. I believe as the teacher stirs up the students potential, the teacher will become more alive and intrinsically rewarded seeing their students gain momentum to go out and create a better world.