There's a Crepe restaurant - Crepe Crazy - in Austin that only hires deaf people. I ate there while visiting Texas in January, and the food was amazing! Their story is even better. Vladimir and Inna Giterman, both deaf, moved to Austin from Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s and struggled to find work. They sold Crepes online for a while, then a food truck in 2007, and finally in their first brick-and-mortar building in 2014. They are thriving, were named #1 in America in 2017, and have expanded into Baltimore, Maryland. All employees are deaf.
In Tokyo, The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders only hires those with dementia. "'Even though 37% of the orders are delivered wrong, 99% of customers are happy,' the restaurant says" (via).
This video, of a man talking about the restaurant and the importance of an old bucket, is quite powerful.
We tend to think certain things should be done in certain ways because that's how they're supposed to be done. Be it instruction and learning, student discipline, or the general operations of school, we don't see much variation or truly outside-the-box thinking almost anywhere. We see the same box, which is decorated differently and holds the same expectations as every other box.
And sometimes - oftentimes - I wonder what it would look like to drop the box and get a bucket, a wheelbarrow, or - to steal from one of our 7th graders today - a remote-controlled car. What would it look like, as an educator, father, or husband, to engage with the task at hand in a truly different way?
What if, as I - what if we - tried new ways of doing things, seeing things, and reacting to situations? What if we were wrong 37% of the time but happy 99% of the time? What would that look like?
I have no idea. Which is probably why we often choose to stay in the box.
And why, in so many frustrating areas of life we - or at least I - stay right where we've always been.
That's what I've been thinking about lately.