Teacher smears peanut butter all over herself in class ... and it's actually a brilliant lesson
A clever teacher used a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich to teach a messy lesson about creative writing.
Sloan posted a video of the writing lesson on TikTok, where it got more than 53 million views. For the exercise, Sloan presented a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly to her 22 students, then made a sandwich, based on their exact step-by-step instructions.
“I’m going to read some of your responses on how to make a PB&J, and then I am going to copy exactly what your writing says,” Sloan told her students.
Sloan read out loud from one of the papers in her stack.
“So, the first one says, ‘You get bread, you get peanut butter and you get jelly,” she said, gathering the items in her arms. “Did I make it?”
“No!” answered her students in unison.
“That’s what it said to do,” answered Sloan, sounding confused. “I got my bread, I got my peanut butter and I got my jelly — so it’s done.”
“That’s not how you make it!” said a student.
Sloan turned to another student’s paper.
“Put the bread flat,” Sloan read, pressing down on the packaged loaf with both hands. “Alright, it’s pretty flat. I feel like that’s good.”
Sloan continued, “Spread jelly and jam on the bread.” The teacher opened the jar of jelly, scooped out a handful with her bare bands and smeared it on the package of bread, while her students recoiled.
Kayleigh Sloan, who teaches 4th and 5th grade, embraces a messy classroom. (@wemetatacme via Instagram)
“OK, I feel like this is good so far,” said Sloan, adding, “Put peanut butter on the other side.” Sloan opened the jar of peanut butter, grabbed a fistful and spread it onto the loaf, exclaiming, “Ooh! It’s crunchy!”
Sloan flipped the loaf around and spread the peanut butter on the other side, per the student’s directions.
“Like this?” asked Sloan, holding up the loaf. “Is it ready to eat?”
The students screamed, “Ewww!” and “Noooo!” One said, “That’s not how you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!”
“That’s what it said to do!” Sloan replied, bewildered.
Sloan followed another student’s directions.
“You need to get out the — Ooooh! Get out the bread. First, I get out the bread,” said Sloan, pulling out a slice.
“Get out some jelly. Perfect!” Sloan continued, throwing a handful on the table. “Peanut butter too,” Sloan told herself, slamming a wad of peanut butter down alongside the jelly.
“OK, it’s ready,” Sloan told her students. “That’s what it said to do.”
Elementary school teacher Kayleigh Sloan taught creative writing to her students using a PB&J sandwich. (@wemetatacme via Instagram)
Turning to a new student’s assignment, Sloan said, “Let’s try another one: First, you must put on the jelly. Then, you must put on peanut butter.”
Feigning perplexity, Sloan said, “Wait — I need to put it on? What?”
Sloan rubbed the peanut butter and jelly up and down her bare arms.
“You’re doing it wrong!” yelled a student.
“OK, it’s on — am I done?” asked Sloan.
When the class cried out, “No!” Sloan said, “But you told me to put it on. Like a T-shirt?”
Concluding the demonstration, Sloan said, “So, we just did a whole lesson on adding detail to our writing. Do we understand why you have to have detail? Did anybody ever mention a plate or a knife?”
Holding up a paper plate and a knife, Sloan asked, “Did we even use these?”
Sloan added, “All I did was exactly what you told me to do. So, do we see how important it is to include all the correct steps? ... So, if we were to redo this, what could our first step be?”
Sloan’s students narrated the steps for building a proper peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.
TikTok comments on Sloan’s video include, “A core memory” and “These kids will never forget that lesson.”
“Imagine those kids going home and trying to explain this to their parents,” someone wrote.
Kayleigh Sloan, a first and second grade teacher asked her students to write instructions for a PB&J sandwich. (@wemetatacme via Instagram)
Sloan, a fourth-year teacher, tells TODAY.com she learned about the PB&J experiment on TikTok five years ago. Sloan now does it each year and says it always gets funnier.
“The point of the lesson is to add detail and be descriptive in writing,” says Sloan. “Words are so important and can easily change the meaning of what we’re saying. That’s why I was so literal with the instructions.”
The lesson, said Sloan, was “hilarious” and her students “laughed so hard."
Sloan embraces a cluttered classroom — she teaches “sight words” to her students by squirting shaving cream all over their desks and having them spell the words with their fingers.
Why not use a pen and paper?“That gets boring after a while,” explains Sloan.
After the PB&J lesson, Sloan asked her students to rewrite their papers.
“They added so many adjectives and were overall way more descriptive than the first time,” she says.
Sloan says she wants to be as “memorable” to her students as her own elementary school teachers.
“Learning is supposed to be fun and messy,” she says.
