When Worlds Collide

business, family, humor, lessons learned, Teaching and Education, technology 1 Minute

When worlds collide is one of my favorite expressions.

One example that always comes to mind for me is what if Moms Demand Action, a gun rights organization, booked a hotel where there was also a meeting of the NRA taking place?

Another example might be a vegan showing up at an all-you-can-eat steakhouse.

And the other night, another example hit close to home.

My wife and I were sitting in our family room; I think I was watching The Twilight Zone and my wife was getting her lesson plan ready for teaching the next day.

I then heard my wife’s computer playing a video that was very familiar to me.

It’s a video I show in my Intro to Business class every year as part of the discussion on Operations Management. It’s a reenactment of how Henry Ford created the first assembly line.

I mentioned that to my wife, and she said she shows a video that is quite similar to her pre-k class every year as part of her unit on Transportation.

Who knew that a pre-k class and a first-year college class would be using the same material?

I guess there is some truth to that saying: Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned In Kindergarten (or in this case, pre-k).

Now I feel like I need to up my game. Maybe I could have the students actually build an assembly line in class! But then my wife told me that she sets the students up in an assembly line and has them make snowmen out of Play-Doh…

Maybe I’ll just stick to teaching accounting.

I can’t imagine any pre-school teacher wanting to teach that.

After all, they want their children to have fun…

In case you are interested, here is the five-minute video; I think it’s quite well done.

*image from Detroit Institute of Arts

Published by Jim Borden

A 60-something guy trying to figure out the world, and his place in it. Happily married for 40-plus years, three wonderful sons. Accounting teacher, fitness enthusiast, blogger, reader.

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44 thoughts on “When Worlds Collide”

  4. That was amazing. I am surprised that it worked for a pre-school class. As an adult, I loved it, especially Ford pulling the first car. That really was revolutionary. I never worked on an assembly line. Did you? I have a friend who worked in a fruit packing plant when she was a teen. Did you ever see the I Love Lucy episode where she worked on an assembly line? Great post, Jim.

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  5. Those pre-kers must be very advanced. There were no cartoons or furry characters just some funny music at one point. It would be funny if after seeing the video one of your students announced that it was the same one that was shown in pre-k. 😄

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  6. Great story! The closest my wife (a retired preschool teacher and director) and I ever came to something like this is I’d inherit a couple of her former students every year.

    Maybe you and your wife should change places for a day. She can lead your college students in circle time, and you can give your award-winning lecture on debits and credits to her pre-k class.

    “Mr. Borden, when is our teacher coming back?”😎

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  9. like you, i love ‘when worlds collide’ situations, and it is so true that pre-k and the oldies often collide. i carpooled for years with a high school teacher at my school and our discussions about our classes, the dramas, and the situations/lessons often had eerie parallels.

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  11. It doesn’t surprise me that there are overlaps in your curriculum. When I taught college English, I used The Three Little Pigs as an example to help my students learn a certain concept. (Then I transferred those principles to adult literature, of course.) It’s always easiest to instruct someone by breaking things down to their simplest form. I bet your academic world and your wife’s collide more often that you’d ever expect. Or if not, they could.

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  14. This was delightful! Pre-K children have brains that absorb everything. They’re sponges. They will definitely ‘get’ much of this, just not in the same way your students do. I must remember to show this video to my students the next time I do a unit on transportation. Thank you Jim and Mary!

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      1. Thank you, Jim. I am saving that video. And, building Mr. Potato Head on an assembly line is perfect! Tell Mary I have always wanted to use real potatoes. Has she ever done that? Of course the original was parts only, and you supplied the potato. I remember! Those parts had much sharper points, so maybe slightly microwaving the potato would work. I want to try this.

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  15. My husband and I are pretty opposite souls.. he works with numbers and logic and I work in a field of morals and emotions… lol everything we do in our jobs is when worlds collide LOL he has no clue what I do and why I do what I do and I have no idea or interest in what he does or how he does what he does lol and there you have it… 😂

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  17. A mixed blessing- mass motoring has not been good for Gaia and factory work is not good for the soul, humans need to be creative. But perhaps those ideas would be a little complex for your wife’s little ones! Factories and manufacturing have of course brought many benefits as well.

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