Schema?

(This was an e-mail only sent to my teacher friends...)

I had to share this with a group of people who I knew
would understand. Maybe, you can think of a way to
relate it to kiddos?

Last week I was sitting in a cafe reading the
newspaper. I came across an article called 'Search
for the Best Pie". This gentleman had gone all over
New Zealand looking for the best pies and had written
a book about it, and this article was getting the good
dish (no pun intended). So, being a traveler and
pie-lover, I thought it might be interesting to read
and find out more about where I can find really good,
fresh, New Zealand pie (because nothing beats a good
old-fashioned piece of homemade pie from a shop on the
side of a country road, right? Are you with me on
that?).

So I am reading the article and it's talking about
good fillings and crispy crust, and I'm thinking about
the awesome blueberry pie ala-mode I had in Maine, and
my grandma's killer rhubarb pie. Yum. And it keeps
talking about where these pies are found, and I am
trying to locate the areas in my head (from my
non-extensive knowledge of the island). When I was
about a quarter of the way through the article, the
author referred to the ingredients he loves the best
as meaty, the kind you can stick a fork into and
really pick up. I thought that was a really
interesting way to describe fruit, and my inference
was that he thought of meaty as a good way to describe
a pie with heaps and heaps of filling.

Then, halfway through the article, he described how
the vegetables in the pie had to be cooked a certain
way with the gravy.

Hold that thought!

My schema changed! I then realized that the ENTIRE
article was about savory pies (think chicken pot
pies), which everyone eats here and calls pie without
thinking twice about it.

Yikes! What a learning moment in my brain.

And I knew I had to share it with my favorite schema
experts.

Man! I wish I would have kept the article to send!
What a perfect example of what happens to each of us,
and what we try to teach our students to learn, each
day.

Love from Down Under,