Jacqueline Simmons:
Okay, so here we are in a supermarket. We don't need to name the supermarket. There are so many supermarkets. Pick a supermarket and do a little wandering.

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah, come with us to the grocery store.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Welcome to Curriculum Encounters, a podcast about exploring knowledge wherever you find it.

Sarah Gerth:
And thinking about what kind of knowledge matters for teaching and designing curriculum. I am Sarah Gerth and I'm a research fellow at the Teachers College Digital Futures Institute.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And my name is Jackie Simmons. I'm an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Columbia University's Teachers College. We are both educators and curriculum designers who care a lot about teaching and learning. In this podcast, we really want to encourage everyone to think deeply about knowledge and understand that you can have rich and varied learning experiences almost anywhere you find yourself.
So come with us in this episode to a grocery store. We all go to the markets to shop for groceries, sometimes multiple times a week. We wanted to slow down that typical chore to see what else drives the choices that you make for yourself and for your family. So Sarah, what's the first thing you do when you enter a grocery store?

Sarah Gerth:
I look for the bananas.

Jacqueline Simmons:
I look for the sales.

Sarah Gerth:
They always put the produce at the front, and bananas are the top of our grocery list every week. And they're also the first thing I'm seeing as I walk into this grocery store.

Jacqueline Simmons:
The first thing I saw was Parm Crisps for $3.99, and I swear in my neighborhood, they're $10.99. And I thought, "Wow, I've got to get some of those." Yeah, I'm totally captivated by the sales. I'm looking at the things that I normally buy. I think I'm at the age where I just buy the same things. I don't go too far out of my normal everyday list.

Sarah Gerth:
So we're in a grocery store, and we want to introduce you to our practice for having curriculum encounters.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yes.

Sarah Gerth:
And the first step of that practice for us is to spend some time wandering.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yes. We usually separate and come back after about 15 minutes to share what we noticed.
Okay, so-

Sarah Gerth:
Jackie, you have a cart full of things.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah, I do. I was reflecting on how we started when I said that I enter into a grocery store and I pretty much had the same shopping list every week. And then, I was thinking about how as a kid, we also had the same shopping list and I was struck by, there's a lot of old school products here. And I kept seeing things that I had not seen in literally decades. So I started shopping for my 8-year-old self.

Sarah Gerth:
What a fun prompt. Go grocery shopping for your 8-year-old self.

Jacqueline Simmons:
So both the things that I enjoyed, but also some of the things that I just knew were staples in our house. And so, this kind of dates me. I'm the kind of person who doesn't really disclose how old I am, but I think some of these things might date me. I have the quintessential peanut butter and jelly, and it was always Skippy peanut butter.

Sarah Gerth:
That's pretty age neutral.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And I was looking for Welch's grape jelly, because I think that was a favorite in our house, but I could only find Smucker's. But Concord grape jelly was the only way to go. I could not bear seeds in strawberry jam or raspberry jam.

Sarah Gerth:
No. Very detrimental to taste.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yes.

Sarah Gerth:
It was always Skippy with all those extra ingredients that I wouldn't get now.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Right. I wouldn't get them now. I also, if I had gotten to the bread aisle, I would've looked for Wonder Bread, because that was also what my mom preferred. Because she was giving us all the vitamins and nutrients that come in a bag of Wonder Bread. I also found things again like Wishbone Italian dressing. I didn't even know until I was an adult that one could make salad dressing at home.

Sarah Gerth:
My dad made salad dressing, but he always made it in the same kind of like this vintage glass container.

Jacqueline Simmons:
I remember those containers.

Sarah Gerth:
And it had sort of markings on the side. And this yellowed rubber plastic lid. I can picture that salad dressing mixer that he would use.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And there was actually a brand that came with a little packet of seasonings that you mix with olive oil and vinegar. I don't remember what that is.

Sarah Gerth:
I don't either.

Jacqueline Simmons:
But, oh boy, I envied the kids who had that at home. I found this jar of Sanka Instant Coffee, and it made me think of my mom. It was so nice to see. And then this bottle of Tabasco, the classic Tabasco sauce. This was a favorite of my dad's. And sometimes I would find these tiny little bottles in his pockets, because he'd clearly be at a conference or at work or on an airplane and they'd have little tiny bottles of Tabasco. And I always thought they were so cute.

Sarah Gerth:
So Jackie, what's curricular here?

Jacqueline Simmons:
Well, I think in my own exploration, I was thinking about how supermarkets, we get a lot of our food here, and food carries so much in relation to our identities and our histories and our memories. And I think that's connected to family and our relationships with each other. And so, I may not be aware of it all of the time, but I'm pretty sure after this little exercise, I go into a supermarket and I think I'm always bringing my mother with me. I think I'm always bringing some member of my family with me, because something is probably triggered whether I activate it and spend time with it or not, I don't know.

Sarah Gerth:
Yeah. Coming to a grocery store in this way to wander reminds me a lot of grocery shopping with my dad as a kid. And grocery shopping with my dad as a kid was an adventure. And this was a four-hour Saturday afternoon affair.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Really?

Sarah Gerth:
We would go to four different grocery stores with little purpose other than to wander around and find something unique to try or a little sample=.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Really?

Sarah Gerth:
... until we got to the grocery store where we actually bought all of our food. But there'd be four stops, and there'd be one grocery store where we got our tomatoes, another grocery store where we got our olives, another grocery store where we got our cheese. And we'd wander around and try some new little item, and then go to the grocery store where you got just your weekly stuff-

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah.

Sarah Gerth:
... where it was cheaper and you knew the route. But this kind of wandering through the store reminded me of that, those long afternoons, going to different grocery stores.

Jacqueline Simmons:
I think that's a great curriculum activity as well to try something new. I think we should each, before we leave, find one thing to take home to try that we have never tried before. Maybe we'll recommend something to each other. And I think it's a really good metaphor for knowledge, too, and how sometimes we like to stay in our own disciplines, our fields. If you say, "I'm a math person, math's my favorite class," and you just stick with that and you don't open yourself up to science or history or the article that you don't want to read because maybe you think you won't be interested or you won't get it. The supermarket kind of reminds us that it's okay to try. It costs very little of us to just try something new and wander and see new things.

Sarah Gerth:
I think part of that, too, is also how to manage choices. I think something I love about grocery stores are the choices. I stood for a long time in the tea section. And it's just like, "Oh, my gosh, there's so many teas."
And then I was paralyzed by that choice. And I think that can happen, too, in curriculum, informal settings and traditional settings. It's always about choices and there's so many things to choose from, but you've got to kind of fit what you can into your cart.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yes.

Sarah Gerth:
And that process of making choices is a very curricular one.

Jacqueline Simmons:
It is. We always talk about curriculum design as about decision-making, right? You're choosing, you're making decisions about what knowledge to select, how to organize it, what to prioritize, what not.

Sarah Gerth:
And after a while, you just start making the same choices every week. But this is really an invitation to, if you're a teacher in a traditional classroom, to play with that sense of choice.

Jacqueline Simmons:
I think that's such a great reminder for us all.

Sarah Gerth:
So we're going to pick out something new. We're going to shop for our 8-year-old selves. And we're going to think about the choices we make as we grocery shop.

Jacqueline Simmons:
That's right. And we'll have some photographs and artifacts that we collect from the supermarket to share with you. That's a part of the end of our curriculum encounters practice. After we've wandered and shared what we've noticed, we then pick up some materials, take some photos, we record some sounds, so that we have something to reflect on afterwards.

Sarah Gerth:
So we wandered around the grocery store again, doing our actual groceries. And then gave ourselves this assignment to find something for the other person.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yes. And so, Sarah, I've gotten you a box of S&B Golden Curry. It's a Japanese curry mix that comes in this brick that almost looks like chocolate. And it's perforated and you break off a cube, and you dissolve it in water, and it makes your cauliflower and string beans and broccoli and whatever other bean or vegetable you want to mix in there, the most luscious, delicious curry. Have you ever tried it?

Sarah Gerth:
I've never tried this. I'm going to make it this weekend.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Yeah, don't be afraid of the MSG. It's your friend.

Sarah Gerth:
Okay. MSG is my friend.

Jacqueline Simmons:
MSG.

Sarah Gerth:
And I'm going to make this with chickpeas and-

Jacqueline Simmons:
That's exactly how I'd make it.

Sarah Gerth:
... add some cauliflower. Oh, it's going to be great.

Jacqueline Simmons:
It's great.

Sarah Gerth:
Over fried rice.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Over rice, yep.

Sarah Gerth:
Perfect.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Okay.

Sarah Gerth:
Jackie, I got you this Italian truffle hot sauce.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Wow.

Sarah Gerth:
It came in this really charming bottle in the hot sauce section. And I remember you grabbed the Tabasco because it reminded you of your family's kitchen and home. And we were talking about things that we don't choose, sort of that indulgent item or the kind of superfluous item that just looked so fun.

Jacqueline Simmons:
Wow. It's a gorgeous bottle. It is this turquoise blue cap, and the label is this very old school designed, iconic, Italian label. What I love the most about it though is that it's zero calories. So I can't imagine what it's made of. It's just nothing. It's just flavor. It's a bottle of flavor.
So, when we teach curriculum design to students here at Teachers College, we do so much work in that class to expose students to perhaps different philosophies and aims. It's not just about knowing where you come from, but exposing yourself to other ideas, to new ideas and new orientations, because that is how we grow.

Sarah Gerth:
And it can be so helpful to do that in community, to help expose blind spots or to poke at what is so familiar that it's hard to see. And so, when we went to the grocery store together and both thought about our 8-year-old selves or how our families approached grocery stores, there were things that were similar, the Skippy peanut butter, but there were also things that were really unique to our family cultures and histories and identities.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And I think that's why these curriculum encounters can be so useful, because it adds a little bit of playfulness to what you just described as tense or sometimes uncomfortable. Yeah, it might be. But is there a way to invite it and enjoy it and find some kind of pleasure in the disruption so that we're not always looking at change or questioning or analysis as something to be afraid of, but something that actually we enjoy and we might invite.

Sarah Gerth:
And they can be so shaped by our childhood experiences of curriculum, just like going to the grocery store as an adult might be shaped by those earlier memories and experiences.

Jacqueline Simmons:
And with knowledge, too, like what we've been taught in school. I know so many of us as teachers tend to teach the way that we were taught. It's because my teacher did it that way, and it's how I learned that knowledge. And there is this really strong pull. And that's another theme that I think came up in this episode, one about our habits. We often have a tendency to habitually refer to some of those taken for granted ways that we think about things. We might call them our preferences. And we have preferences for knowledge, too. We have preferences for the kind of choices that we make, the kinds of things that we want to remain aware of. And it may have taken us a really long time to come to know ourselves and to know what we like, what we don't like, why, where those preferences may have come from.
And so, we might think, "I don't really feel like challenging that right now. I've done a lot of work to get there." But I think part of what we discovered in the supermarket is that there are opportunities all around us to just try new things, explore new kinds of knowledge, maybe revisit old ideas that we previously rejected.

Sarah Gerth:
This is making me think about the way our family histories and relationships influenced our experience of the grocery store, and how we both honor those histories and recognize the ways that we've grown, or because of the circumstances of our lives and how grocery stores have changed, Our grocery lists do look different than the list we had when we were 8. And I think that can be a nice way to acknowledge those different starting points, because of our family histories and cultures and identities and how that shaped who we are and how we go to the grocery store today.

Jacqueline Simmons:
So this season, after the end of each episode, we are going to leave you with two activities, and hopefully you'll be able to do the same kind of fieldwork that we were doing in the supermarket. Take yourself on a walk to a grocery store and engage with a memory. We demonstrated for you two different ways that might look.

Sarah Gerth:
One of them is to go grocery shopping for your 8-year-old self. What's on that grocery list? What emotions and memories does it bring up?

Jacqueline Simmons:
And that's a really playful way to think about your family and your family history. Another way might just be to do what Sarah did as a child and try new things. Look for something that seems unusual or odd, different for your palate or different from your typical shopping list. And maybe try it with a friend, exploring together, maybe picking out something for your friend. You'll be able to find a quick lesson plan for those two field activities in a field guide in the show notes. So, we hope you try those two field activities, and drop us a note and let us know how they go for you.

Sarah Gerth:
Curriculum Encounters is part of the DFI Podcast Network at Teachers College Columbia University. It was edited by Jackie Simmons and Sarah Gerth. Studio recordings are engineered by Billy Collins and Abu Abdelbagi. Website and social media support is by Abu Abdelbagi and Madeline Gee-Stillman. Our theme music is designed by Noah Teachy. Listen to episodes of this podcast on our website or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have comments, email us at CurriculumEncounters.TC.edu. For more great podcasts, check out the DFI Podcast Network where you can find Groovin Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories by our colleagues, OreOluwa Badaki and Azsaneé Truss.