3.3 Impact
At the end of each year, usually in a first- or second-year core course where I have introduced ICE, the last day of class is Toaster Day. Toaster Day has become an annual ritual. Upon conclusion of that day’s lesson, I send students away with a kind of valediction. I get out an old chrome pop-up toaster as a prop and I set it on a desk and I tell the story of the broken toaster again. By this point in December or in April, students are tired. They are overworked and overstressed. And for the most part, have forgotten why they are here, mired in the day to day struggle of simply finishing the year. This time through the story, the punchline lands with a different emphasis:
“And so, they fix the toaster. Your job in the world is to be the kind of people who fix broken toasters. Because the world has a lot of toasters to be fixed.”
The students get it. Whatever challenges they have overcome to attend university or conversely however thoughtlessly easy it was to get here, being here is a privilege and a gift. Reading great works of literature or bearing audience-witness to masterpieces of dramatic or musical performance and then thinking about them, writing about them, and talking about them is not what most people are doing with their day. I remind the students of the great gift of time that they have been given. I remind them that this university community that surrounds them is special and, as they pass through, their time here is fleeting. Beyond this, I point out that in this learning experience they are being enriched with skills, the skill of spiralling through from Ideas to Connections and from Connections to Extensions and from Extensions through again to still other Connections to generate new and different Ideas.
Studies tell us that the students are being enriched—monetarily—by a university education. Over their lifetimes, through the well-paid career paths opened by their university credentials, they will likely benefit materially. I remind them that these gains, whatever they may be, are not just theirs alone. I argue that they have a moral (if you will) obligation to use those skills for the greater good. This is the activist attitude that I mean when I talk to them about “living in Extensions.” Partly this is about the direct application of their problem-seeking, problem-assessing, and problem-solving. Partly this is about internalizing the sense of oneself as the kind of person who sees problem-solving as their responsibility. Being a fixer of broken toasters is the highest calling. It sounds funny, but I believe it to be true.
The reach of Toaster Day dilates through social media via Twitter posts and #brokentoaster. When I tweet that next Wednesday will be Toaster Day, my current students are mystified. But alumni and senior students – especially those on the cusp of graduation – become nostalgic. They too want to be reminded of that activist mission. Each year a small group of fourth-year students ask if they can drop in on the last day to hear the Toaster Story. Twice, I have been delighted by students who arrive bearing their own shiny chrome toasters in tribute.
Sitting down to write about the activist possibility of ICE and the calling to fix toasters, I sent a call-out on our alumni network to ask former students what the broken toaster story means to them. A common thread in their responses was acceptance of the challenge to think beyond the right answer, to embrace a problem, and to grapple with the “so what” of it all. They replied to tell me how it shapes their problem-solving practices as teachers, and as graduate students, and as editors, and as social workers, as theatre stage managers, and as parents. As one student wrote, “As a parent, I use it to help my kids understand some of the more complex ideas in life and to think beyond what they see right in front of them. It’s helpful in creating a game out of problem-solving and encouraging them to think independently from a young age. ICE is a basic concept at heart but opens up a world of possibilities.” Another student wrote from Afghanistan to report on her journey from studying ICE in a liberal arts program to actually going into the field as a humanitarian aid worker.
The alumni who wrote to me also remarked on how the broken toaster story made them feel. It felt to them that they were powerful enough to make a difference. It felt that what they did in their studies and in their lives after university mattered. It felt that they were challenged to step up. This is the intangible part of ICE that feels the most valuable to me. Embedded in the critical/creative thinking, problem-solving, developmental scaffold is an implicit message that it is our job to solve problems. In this way, ICE is profoundly activist. ICE is outward-facing to the world. It is socially engaged. Setting Extensions as the goal invites a broader view. Moreover, Extensions are value-oriented. When fixing toasters is the goal, we are called to ask “What does fixed mean?” “What is the nature of making something better?” When we ask “so what?” and “who cares?” we determine the nature of care. We are called upon to care and to choose the things that we should care about.
