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Chef Youth Apprenticeship:
Demonstration Video
Labs
"This is a great way for students who are not university bound to start and continue in the realm of post secondary education and still make a salary."
(Brad Scott: Director of Culinary Arts at Scott Community College)
The Chef Youth Apprenticeship program offers a viable solution to a growing problem in public education. Many public schools have been forced to narrow their curricula due to budget cuts —eliminating non-core areas like vocational training. Yet, there is a growing need for people to fill a variety of service-based professions in the U.S. economy.
Chef Youth Apprenticeship provides an alternative educational opportunity that broadens the traditional school curriculum for eastern Iowa high school students interested in a career in the food service industry. Students become certified in safe food handling practices, develop an understanding of basic food preparation concepts, and are trained in real world settings through apprenticeships with chefs in their local communities.
Case Quick Reference Subject: Sanitation and Food Preparation Assessment Technologies Used Organization |
"It's different from a culinary school. Culinary students come in 5 days a week and they sit in their classrooms and they probably do some lab work and they may go out on externships for 5 or 6 weeks with a restaurant. My students are elbow to elbow with their senior chefs night after night. I can't teach urgency for the industry in the classroom."
(Brad Scott: Interview)
Eleventh and twelfth grade students can enroll in the Chef Youth Apprenticeship Program to earn elective credits for high school graduation. Coursework includes Sanitation and Safety, Food and Nutrition, Introduction to Baking, and Food Production and Management. In addition, students participate in a culinary practicum that also counts toward nine hours of community college credit for a degree in the Culinary Arts at Scott Community College.
Sanitation and Safety uses traditional pedagogy in which instruction is delivered through lecture and the use of videotapes that were developed by the National Restaurant Association. Students use course information to prepare for an industry standard-based examination that certifies competence in (1) maintaining a sanitary environment for food preparation and food storage to reduce health risks, and (2) employing standard safety procedures in commercial kitchen settings.
Food and Nutrition, Introduction to Baking, and Food Production and Management are hands-on interactive courses in which students receive instruction in food science theory, watch cooking demonstrations and practice their cooking skills in lab kitchens equipped for commercial food production. At the end of each course students demonstrate various cooking competencies through performance-based assessments.
During the Practicum students gain experience in actual placements in commercial kitchens at local restaurants, retirement homes or hospitals. The master chef at a given locale supervises student progress in the completion of a series of units aimed at building skills across the different stations in a standard commercial kitchen. Instructors evaluate students' competencies on a series of checklists and communicate their assessments to high school consumer science teachers and the program director at the community college. The authenticity of the real-world learning context during the practicum allows students to develop confidence in their food preparation skills and apply their understandings of food science theory.
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"If somebody tells me something, shows me, and then lets' me do it, I get it —and I know a lot of people like that. And that's what's cool about our program."
(Brad Scott: Interview)
The Chef Youth Apprenticeship Program delivers instruction for the Sanitation and Safety, Food and Nutrition, Introduction to Baking, and Food Production and Management through the Iowa Communications Network (ICN), a two-way interactive video system with studio classrooms at schools in every Iowa school district. In the Sanitation and Safety class students in various locales gather at their respective ICN sites to listen to a series of lectures and watch short video vignettes developed by the National Restaurant Association called SERVESAFE. Students in the remote locations are able to e-mail or fax their assignments to the course instructor. At the end of the course all students take a state proctored test at the Bettendorf site that qualifies them to receive an Illinois State Managers Certificate in Sanitation —which is valid in all 50 states.
Grants from the Riverboat Development Authority in Bettendorf, the State of Iowa Goals 2000 program, and the Star Schools program were used to fund construction of the ICN commercial kitchen classroom at Bettendorf High School. The classroom is outfitted with six strategically positioned cameras to show the cutting board area for demonstrating knife skills, hot and cold prep areas, and the fryer, convection oven and grill for modeling various cooking techniques. Bettendorf High School students attend Foods and Nutrition classes, Introduction to Baking, and Food Production and Management in the ICN kitchen-classroom. At the same time, students at nine other high schools in eastern Iowa gather in their respective ICN classrooms to watch demonstrations and use the two-way video system to ask questions, share comments, and interact with instructors and peers at remote locations. A local chef demonstrates proper ways to plan meals, and prepare, serve and store food. Students at Bettendorf practice skills and concepts learned in each lesson using the equipment available in the ICN kitchen-classroom while students in the remote locations return to their respective Family and Consumer Science classrooms to practice. Family and Consumer Science teachers at each of the high schools monitor student work and assess progress. The Practicum is the final component of the Chef Youth Apprenticeship Program. Students enrolled in the program spent 16 to 20 hours per week working with a chef in a restaurant or other commercial food service facility —like retirement homes or hospitals —in their local communities. The practicum experience provides students with additional opportunities to practice and develop essential food production skills and concepts learned during lectures and food preparation demonstrations in their classes. Chefs at each location monitor student progress and remediate skills as necessary. For example, after students had learned to make a basic cream sauce during an ICN delivered lesson, they went to their work site and informed their mentor chef of what they had learned. Chefs then provided opportunities for the students to make cream-based sauces in their field placements. Once students had demonstrated competency in a work process, like making one of the basic sauces, the chef signed off on that competency in the students' portfolios. The success of this program is supported by the efficient use of information and communication technologies combined with face-to-face interaction to improve teaching and learning at distant locations. In this case, technology served to facilitate the delivery of expert knowledge to students across eastern Iowa. While this was important, blending these experiences with face-to-face practica interactions give students a unique opportunity to construct their own understanding of the information received in a real world setting. - Some information in this report was adapted from the article Bettendorf High School is Cooking with the ICN, ICN Fiber Optic Lines 7(3), 1:7, 2001. Thanks to Brad Scott and Scott Community College for their help. |
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This case developed by:
Dale Niederhauser, Ph. D. and Denise Lindstrom, M. S.
Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching
Iowa State University
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Case Studies
Web Links:
Iowa Communications Network (ICN): http://www.icn.state.ia.us/
Scott Community College: http://www.eicc.edu/scc/
A project funded by Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust
Partners: Iowa Public Television, Iowa Department of Education,
Iowa State University - Department of Curriculum and Instruction - Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching - Department of Chemistry,
University of Virginia - Curry Schools of Education - Center for Technology and Teacher Education,
Ottumwa Community Schools, Wartburg College
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Last updated: January 2005