I wrote previously about my One Day, One Class idea. So, what topic-based, 6-hour class would I offer students?
The Art and the Science of the Sandwich
If you know me, you know this is a passion of mine; one that I have invested not only significant amounts of time, energy, and finances on, but also far more thought than is normal. My own mother has told me, “If someone put it between two slices of bread, you’d eat a bale of hay.”
I like that she intuitively that a sandwich is only a sandwich if the ingredients are layered between carbohydrates. Clearly, the class would have to begin with a thorough analysis and discussion of what makes something a “sandwich.” Ever since reading The Nicomachean Ethics, I’ve had an intellectual soft-spot for Aristotilean definitions. The Atlantic has come the closest in terms of defining a sandwich (linked in case embed below doesn’t work), I feel:
I do mean Art and Science. There is an art to building the flavors of a good sandwich; and there is also a science to the construction. I liken it often to architecture. A poorly constructed sandwich is unforgivable. When the layers slip, and the contents of the sandwich slide out the back or the sides, it’s an unforgivable engineering failure.
I would segment the class into
- Definition
- History
- Styles of sandwiches
- Local sandwiches of note
The first time that I teach the class, I’d do the first three units of study on campus. We don’t have 120 rooms for each teacher to have a classroom for their 12 students, which is fine; I’d be comfortable around a table in the library or in the student dining commons. After going through the class once, in its second iteration, I’d like to find a sandwich shop in the City that’d let me bring students there for the direct instruction portion of the class.
For Unit 4, Local sandwiches of note, we would hop on MUNI for a circuitous trip around San Francisco, stopping at half a dozen sandwich shops to talk briefly about their history but mainly to examine their menu board, order a sandwich, analyze it, and then divide it so that everyone gets a taste. And then we’d move on to the next shop. I don’t want to spoil the surprise of where we’d be going, but we’d start at Gene’s, which generations of SI students have known and loved. Our MUNI trip will take us to the Richmond, the Mission, Castro, the Financial District, and North Beach.