Adolescent Foodie

Isiah is a total foodie. At our first session, while talking about his family, he mentioned the fact that he cooked breakfast for his younger siblings – scrambled eggs, pancakes and hotdogs. I don’t know what impressed me more – that he was responsible enough to be in charge of his siblings' morning meal or that he knew, at thirteen, how to cook scrambled eggs, pancakes and hotdogs.

The subject came up again when the Thai food was delivered. As promised, the selections we made last week came, and we emptied the bag to put out the spread on the table in my office. And it was awesome. First, it was great fun to introduce Isiah to each dish one by one, talking a little bit about it and having him take some first tastes. The edamame – “Steamed soy beans with salt. You pop the beans out and suck on the pod.” The satay – “Skewered grilled chicken with a peanut-based dipping sauce.” The fried tofu – “Soybeans again, if you can believe it. Not much taste by itself, but it absorbs the flavor of whatever dish it’s in or sauce you dip it in.” The spicy noodle dish – “Wide noodles made from rice flour. Look out for the chiles and jalapeños.” The duck curry – “The duck breast is roasted with the skin and then tossed in a coconut curry sauce with some vegetables.”

I think this was my favorite apprenticeship session with Isiah for two reasons. First, Isiah was genuinely blown away by the experience of the Thai food. He must have said “This is so good!” fifty times, practically after each bite, most of which were completely new foods or flavors to him. Second, I was genuinely blown away by Isiah’s articulation of the experience. At one point he lifted a small plastic cup of dipping sauce for the fried tofu to his nose and gave it a couple sniffs. “This has got peanuts in it, and some chiles, and something sweet.” As he took in the duck curry: “The duck is so juicy and mixes well with the sweet pineapple and spiciness of the sauce.” This went on dish after dish. The kid has a refined palette. More impressively, he has a knack for talking about what he’s tasting and experiencing that most food personalities on television would envy. Being the cook in my family and a lover of lots of different kinds of food, I felt especially fond of this experience. I told Isiah he should think about doing a culinary apprenticeship next semester. He has a great affinity, a natural born talent perhaps, for food.

While the Thai dinner became the centerpiece of this particular session, we did accomplish some real work. We need to move our project along, after all.

Isiah and I actually spent the first part of our session video chatting with Rachelle Damminger, Spark’s Director of Communications. Rachelle is based in our Philadelphia office and, among many other responsibilities, handles all of Spark’s website updates. Since Isiah is building a special page on the Spark website dedicated to students, and because he’s big into networking and collaboration, I wanted him to connect with Rachelle to learn the mechanics behind getting the content he’s developing onto the actual website.

You can always tell when people are really engaged – whether an adult or a young person. There is that telltale sign of leaning in, eyes intently focused on the subject. Isiah’s attention was fixed on the screen as Rachelle gave him first an overview of her job and the important role she plays at Spark and then a peak at the “back end” of the Spark website. It was the first time Isiah was exposed to the inner workings of a website, namely the content management system that makes a site work. Rachelle was able to share her screen and walk him through an example of an update, which turned out to be an awkwardly large headshot of me placed smack dab in the middle of a page about Spark alumni. She promptly took it down, after we had a chuckle.

In addition to engaging with Rachelle, which Isiah liked a lot, and learning about the technology behind website maintenance, he got a taste for how professionals at an organization like Spark interact. Like many companies and nonprofits, Spark operates in multiple locations, with teams of people in each that must interact with one another from a distance virtually. It can be quite challenging at times. But, it’s an important practice to master in the professional world. I’m glad Isiah got a little taste of it.

Later on, Sahrish Saleem from the Spark Chicago program team popped in to spend some time with us as we worked on finishing up some of the content for the web page. Sahrish is new to Spark this year and serves as a Volunteer Coordinator, responsible for supporting mentors from five of our ten partner schools in Chicago this year and making sure the students are getting out of the program what we intend. Sahrish and her peers at Spark across our sites are in many respects the lifeblood of our program. They are the ones who make the magic happen among the students, schools, mentors and company partners. And, as in this instance, they are an important check on program quality.

I felt a little bad that Sahrish came in when she did. Not because she was disruptive in any way, just that she missed the best parts of the session! Namely the video chat with Rachelle and the Thai food. Nevertheless, as a mentor, I valued her presence and had a good check-in with her the next day to get some feedback. I have been reassured by the personal support I have been getting from our team. As I mentioned earlier, there is a weight of responsibility working with a young person, wanting to do right by them and make an impact. The attentive and personalized supports make the whole experience more manageable.

I don’t know how we’re going to top this one. But, we’re past the halfway mark now and zeroing in on our culminating project and Discovery Night. I wouldn’t be surprised if food sneaks its way into the final presentation somehow.

Go with the Flow

As a Spark mentor, you’re never quite sure what state of mind your student is going to be in when he or she shows up for the apprenticeship session. Just as we have many distractions as working professionals, young people have similarly dynamic lives. You might catch them on a day when their adrenaline is really flowing and they are super focused. Or you might encounter a student who would really rather be someplace else at the time, for whatever reason. It’s totally understandable and normal.

Isiah has always been pretty focused and eager when he shows up at Spark. And this week was really no different. We had our normal chitchat as we walked from the L stop to the office, which in large measure serves as our “opening ritual.” The practice of an opening ritual is an important one. Spark mentors are encouraged and trained to make room for this exercise at the beginning of each apprenticeship session as an aid to the student and the mentor to settle in and get focused. Isiah and I spend the time talking about his week, which invariably touches upon tales of him with his friends or siblings.

My contribution to the exchange is to talk about my kids and what they’re up to. It’s fun when Isiah picks up on the interests and activities of my boys and articulates how he relates to them. This week I was explaining how my youngest boy, aged three-and-a-half, was in a superhero phase – big time. Isiah took that and riffed for the duration of our walk on various superhero movies and television shows he’s watched and the lesser-known powers of many of them. Did you know that the Green Latern has more than just one green ring? Apparently, there are many colored rings with corresponding powers. I now have a better appreciation for one who often is seen as a bit of a second-tier crusader.

This week was the start of building out some content for our web page. We began by sifting through a bunch of pictures in our photo library of Spark apprenticeships and events. The first section of the webpage is to showcase what students can explore, so we wanted to find some good shots of students and mentors working together. We went back and looked at some of the survey responses to recall what jobs or fields students were interested in and then tried to find pictures to match.

This wound up being a somewhat tedious and slow process. I could tell Isiah was checking out. We shifted to writing some of the content, again based on the survey. I said I would take his dictation. We went along in fits and starts. This too turned out to be a bit laboring. I sensed Isiah was tired, or just not that into it, or both.

Curiously, out of nowhere, he began talking about pilgrims. He was learning about them in his social studies class earlier that day and started teaching back some of the history. He recounted much of the story: how in England at the time you had to subscribe to one (state-sponsored) religion and that the pilgrims were of a different sect and persecuted and so set sail for America to seek refuge and a new life to practice their faith freely.

His telling of the tale was engaging. He went on for several minutes and covered a lot of ground – the trip across the Atlantic, the encounter with Native Americans, the first Thanksgiving and what food and drink were on offer at the time. Some of my Spark colleagues were with me in the office as Isiah carried on and we were all at once entertained and engrossed.

I was a history major in college, and I confess Isiah was testing the limits of my knowledge and memory. I did at one point score some good points. Isiah was talking about the class groupings among the travelers by sea, whereby the wealthier folk would have posh accommodations above deck and those less fortunate were quartered below. He was hunting for a word to describe the poorer lot, and said it started with a “c” but that was all he could remember. I blurted out: “commoner.” Isiah was taken aback. “Yeah!” he said with surprise. “How did you know that?” I thought to myself: Dr. Hueston would be proud.

This tangent began about halfway into the day’s session, and it lasted the duration. Without really acknowledging it, we paused on our project and just had a nice and very engaging conversation about history. We segued at one point into travel and again touched upon Isiah’s affinity for Thailand. Since our first session, Isiah has been talking about Thailand, wanting to go there and wanting to try the food. I had been meaning to grab some Thai food from a local place and have it ready for him at the office when he came by. So, we took the last few minutes of the session to run through a menu online and pick out some dishes he wanted to try. He was very keen on the fried tofu, having never had tofu and really wanting to try it. We also picked out a spicy noodle dish, some satay, and a curry. We’ll have our own little ethnic Thanksgiving feast next week.

It’s hard to pivot like this. In my work I tend to get very focused on a project or a task and be nose down and bang it out, avoiding distraction as best I can. So, being adaptive, picking up on Isiah’s cues, gauging where his head is, and just going with the flow are good lessons when working with a thirteen-year-old. Indeed, I guess we all could use a breather from the seeming intensity of our work and deliverables. We could all stand to pause every now and again to share our favorite studies of history, places we’re most curious to visit, or food we’ve never tried but want to. It’s times like this when roles seem reversed. I am the learner and Isiah is the one modeling, subtly or not, a new or better way to operate.