Thinking Deeply About Coffee

This week I had a wonderful conversation about coffee. It wasn't with another coffee drinker, my wife, or a barista, but with a curious 8th grade boy. I know, adolescents really shouldn't be drinking coffee, and I told him this right off the bat. He acknowledged the issue with a smile, told me he only drinks coffee on occasion, but continued on with his points anyway. He was excited to tell me about his analysis of two different well-known coffees - Peet's and Starbucks - and give me some insight about their "power." Unequivocally, he stated Peet's had more punch due to it's higher concentration of caffeine in each cup. I asked how he knew this to be, and he went into a hilarious description of how he felt after drinking a cup of Peet's vs. Starbucks. There was no real quantitative data, just typical adolescent-based emotional evidence derived directly from experience. As he recalled his experiment, he used lots of outrageous facial expressions and over the top descriptions of what happens when you drink the two coffees. It was amusing and enlightening to watch. I noted his opinions, thanked him for giving me the head's up, and then steered the conversation over to more middle school appropriate topics. 

This morning when I went to get an Americano at a trendy cafe in town, I got involved in another talk about coffee with two baristas about the origins of my drink. Apparently, the Caffe Americano can be traced back to WWII. The first Americano is known to have come from Europe after American GI's wanted to find a way to make their espresso appear and taste more like their home brewed drip coffee. To assist the Americans, the European baristas decided to dilute the shots with hot water, helping create a great coffee substitute. The young man who made my drink went on to talk in great detail about the variety of tastes and attributes within the Americano, which makes it a beloved drink for many coffee  aficionados even today. As he spoke, I noticed he communicated with that same curiosity, humor, and interest of the 8th grade boy I met earlier in the week.

There is some commonality in these two conversations. Yes, they were both about coffee, but the real similarity was how the 8th grader and the barista showed a deep desire to learn. They were curious - and I bet are curious about many things - and probably find all types of subjects and topics fascinating. This curiosity leads to exploration and discovery, two things that are required for real, deep learning to occur and are key characteristics in all future problem solvers. 

Don't worry parents. Coffee - though studies show is helpful for focus, pain reduction, and weight loss - is not required. 

What's in a number?

When I was a boy, I loved to sign my name with the #16 in the middle of my big, sweeping letter J, my first initial. 16 was the number of Dwight "Doc" Gooden, the 80's pitching prodigy on the NY Mets. I would fantasize about being a player on the Mets, like Doc, and of course, I needed to have a pretty cool autograph. I identified with it and what it represented - excellence, fame, heroism, and a blazing fastball. I wrote 16 on everything I owned - notebooks, shirts, my locker, the back of my algebra tests. That number signified something for me and I wanted the world to know about it.

This morning I noticed my son had placed #44 on his gym shorts. When he was four, we moved to Syracuse, where he was introduced to that number when I bought him a Syracuse football jersey. I remember him asking me, "why 44?" So I looked it up. In fact, it had an important history in S.U. athletics.  Since 1954, 11 players have worn the number and three earned All-America honors.  The three most famous #44s, Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Floyd Little, rank among the finest running backs to ever play the game. And the town is crazy for the number too. Proof? The university zip code was changed a few years ago from 13210 to 13244.  In 1988, when the university changed phone systems, the exchange was changed from 423 to 443.  

As the University states, "Number 44 not only has come to represent greatness on the football field, it has become a part of the university’s and the community’s identity." It is much more than a simple number. It is about who we are and who we want to be, which is what I was seeking as an emerging adolescent with the #16, just as my son is now that he is a middle schooler with #44 - identifying with something great, something bigger than oneself. As parents and educators, we need to honor and respect these symbols - a number, a baseball hat, a backpack, a team jersey - that adolescents use to show us who they are trying to be. And most often, it's something fantastic.