Waffle Shopping

A personal takeaway from a conference that I attended in Washington, DC . . . 

Waffle Shopping: serendipitous learning that occurs from deliberately engaging in an activity for which the outcome is unpredictable and the risk of failure exists.

I believe being able to make connections between seemingly disparate pieces of knowledge is fundamental to learning. I personally find that I am most often able to make connections when I am cognitively prepared to encounter the unexpected. Since I started attending Teaching and Learning Conferences many years ago, I’ve made a point of sampling local restaurants that are often off the beaten track. This entails embracing a certain level of risk — any restaurant might be much worse than expected, and I might fail to achieve my goal of eating a good meal by choosing an obscure restaurant that is obscure for a very good reason.

This year I ate breakfast at the Waffle Shop, a diner mentioned by another conference participant. While walking there, hoping for a plate of tasty waffles but aware that I might be headed toward a horrible meal, I noticed a building with an ornate façade that contained an H&M clothing store. I continued round the corner, and saw a “Woodward & Lothrop” metal plaque on the side of the building. I realized that this was the site of the now-defunct department store that my father worked at more than a half-century ago, on the day that JFK was assassinated. Continuing down the street, I passed Ford’s Theater, made famous by John Wilkes Booth. Before my early morning stroll to the diner, I had no idea that I would encounter these landmarks.

This is a simple illustration of the fact that we are surrounded by opportunities for learning, but that stumbling across them often means embracing the possibility that we might fail to achieve our initial objective.