Cooking Up A Better Curriculum
Donation protected
Who I am:
This past year, I began a new chapter in my life as I started work in one of Metro Atlanta's numerous Title 1 schools. At this school, I teach 9th and 10th grade English Language Arts to students who, the majority of which, come to me with reading levels between 4th and 7th grade. It is nothing like the school environment I had growing up, and it is not an environment that is always conducive to learning, but it is the school where these kids have to go and it is their only shot at getting the education they need to become the professionals and leaders that will change our community for the better down the road.
This past year, it was a privilege and a blessing to get to know my students. The school they have to attend is a rough place to be. The neighborhoods they live in are tough places to survive. The stories they brought with them and shared with me broke my heart time and time again.
These students became my kids. They were not some statistic. They were not some subgroup to be objectified. They were not some faceless part of South Metro Atlanta that had nothing to do with me. They are my kids, and I want them to have every chance they deserve.
To my surprise, in the midst of teaching English, I found a new way that I could help some of my most difficult kids. In one of our bellringer assignments, I asked what they wanted to do after high school. When I read that a good number had dreams of going into culinary arts, I found a connection with them that I hadn’t even known was there.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother told me one summer break, after I asked for something to eat, “You know where the kitchen is.” That day I started out frying a piece of bologna and now, 26 years later, I cook roast duck for our annual Christmas Feast. From that day on, I have developed a love of cooking that has never dwindled. In the Boy Scouts, I cooked five course meals on campouts under the stars. After college, I worked for a year as a cook in a restaurant kitchen. As an adult, I continue to cook and host dinners for friends and family.
So when I learned that some of my students had the same passion I do, I saw where I could help in a unique way.
The limits of our current curriculum:
In recent years, our school district has made a huge push to have students be college ready when they leave. To a degree, they give lip service about being career ready, as well; however, with a strictly liberal arts focus, this only prepares students for a narrow field of jobs.
But this was not always the case. Our schools used to have preparatory classes for trade jobs as well. In fact, the school at which I work still has the defunct garage and bodyshop for the automotive class that was discontinued. Presently, the district has a few focus schools that feature classes for only one trade or another, but this curriculum is inaccessible to students who can only go to the school in the area where their parent(s) happens to live and work.
So as it stands, high school for many of these students is frustrating because they know that what they really need in order to prepare for the work they want won’t be found in our classrooms. Understanding this, it’s no wonder that they act out and misbehave. As one of our veteran teachers put it when he was speaking about how it was in the past with the trade classes, “At least then they had a reason to behave in your class when they knew it meant participating in the automotive class that they actually enjoyed and got something out of.”
How I can help my students:
Because of my own cooking experience, I can start a Culinary Arts Club after school for those students that are looking into culinary arts as their vocation. With my personal experience and the connections I have with other professionals in the field, I can bring my students the resources that might give them that head start and real preparation for the work they want to do after they leave my classroom.
What our students will receive:
For their participation and commitment to the program, I want to be able to provide each student with a standard chef coat and hat. It has been proven that when you are able to dress the part then you are more likely to play the part. The very dress code we will require in the club will signify that what we are doing after school is no mere extracurricular game, but the serious business of preparing for a professional life.
Through this club, we will cover basic professional kitchen skills: sanitation, food prep, plating, etc. We will cover cooking skills that will be essential in the home kitchen and a restaurant: nutritional requirements, meal planning, sauté, sauces, soups, slow cooking, etc. We will cover business skills: professionalism, marketing, budgeting, etc. We will even sneak in other academic material: physical science (e.g. pressure cooking and how it works), chemical science (e.g. baking), and mathematics (e.g. measurement conversions, recipe size adjustments, and budgeting).
While the students will not receive any credits that would show up on their academic transcripts, they will be participating in a program that they can include in their resumés to help them standout from other candidates when they apply to culinary art schools and restaurant positions.
Lastly, this kind of program helps teach kids life skills that so many young people are lacking now. Not only will we be teaching them how to be professionals, we’ll be teaching them how to be adults.
What you can do to help:
To make this work, my students and I need your support. The school where I teach has a full kitchen setup in a classroom that is perfect for teaching culinary arts, but we need more than just the kitchen space.
Before we can get this program off the ground I will need to purchase the following materials: uniforms (chef coat and hat); knives; basic cooking utensils; pots and pans; cutting boards; measuring cups/spoons; towels; sponges; soap; basic dish-, glass-, and silverware; and ingredients.
I will be looking for the best deals (including thrift stores and donations) on most items; and those that have to be new, such as uniforms and ingredients, I’ll be buying at the cheapest price possible.
Here’s a basic breakdown:
Uniforms for 15 students, $30 per = $450
Pans = $75
Knives = $30
Dish service for 12 = $60
Silverware for 15 = $60
Utensils/cutting board/towels/etc. = $50
Ingredients for one year ($15 per week for 32 weeks) = $480
GoFundMe service fees = 8%
TOTAL = $1,300.00
Any donations over our goal amount will allow us to expand the program in several ways. We can add more students. We can take trips to visit professional kitchens. We can teach more recipes each week.
Where I teach:
Lastly, because this is a school so different from the ones with which many of my friends would be familiar in more affluent school districts, let me briefly share with you the school environment in which I work. At this point, I’m not sharing just to let you know why this kind of program is so important for my kids, but it is also to help you understand why teaching where I do is so important to me.
Our students' breakfasts and lunches are entirely subsidized so that many of them can at least get a balanced meal during the day when they cannot get one at home. Many of our students come from low-income, single parent homes. For these families, the most cost effective shopping list is the least healthy. I often ask, how can a student learn when they are hungry?
The neighborhoods in which many of my students live are torn apart by gang violence. The violence they have to deal with at home follows them to school. We have multiple fights throughout the school on a nearly daily basis. I had multiple fights in my own classroom throughout the year. I often ask, how can a student learn when they can't even feel safe?
Our classes are filled beyond capacity. The average size of my 10th grade class was 35 students. I had more students than I had student desks in my classroom. All told, I was responsible for approximately 200 students each semester. It is impossible for any teacher to give adequate individual attention to that many students. I often ask, how can a student learn when they aren’t even given adequate space to learn?
Our district is short on funds and supplies. When it came time for the 10th grade English classes to read Animal Farm as part of our required curriculum, we could only get our hands on four physical copies of the book in the entire school, and our request to the district weeks before for more copies was never answered. I often ask, how can a student learn when they don’t even have access to the material that the curriculum requires?
For most of my students, they have no say in where they go to school. They are just kids, after all. It is simply determined by where their parents can find work and where they live.
When faced with such a broken system, it would be easy to come up with excuses. It would be easy to simply say, “It’s not the kid’s fault, but the parents should have just tried harder and moved somewhere else.” But I can’t justify abandoning a child just because I can shift the blame. It would be easy to simply say, “It’s a tough break for that kid, but that’s just how it is.” But I can’t justify letting a child grow up like that in my city just because I can blame fate. It would be easy to simply say, “These kids prove they don’t want better with the behavior they demonstrate.” But I can’t give up on a child just because they did what any child would do: they learned from the environment around them. It would be easy to simply say, “The system here is just too broken, I would be better off in a district where I can do more good.” But so many of my kids have suffered from enough abandonment in their lives that I can’t bring myself to leave them behind now.
I wish you could meet my kids. I wish you could hear each of their stories of how they’ve grown up and their dreams of where they want to be in the future. While getting to know my kids the way I do may be impossible for you, I hope that you’ll be able to help me here so that I can do more to help them. None of us alone can fix this problem, but with your help, I pray that we can do what little bit of good we can.
Thank you, in advance, for all your support!
One Year Update!
One year ago, I asked for help in creating a culinary arts program for my students in a school where resources are always in need and opportunities for vocational growth can be hard to come by. One year ago, people from all across Atlanta and beyond pitched in to make this program come to life.
For all those that have helped, I want to let you know what we accomplished this past year and what we are planning to do this coming year to expand the program.
Over the past year, our Culinary Art Club met every week to learn the skills needed for home and professional cooking. Students practiced knife work, including making fine garnishes. They worked on baking, including making English scones and pizzas from scratch. Students explored French cuisine as they learned how to use an authentic crepe pan and made apple cinnamon crepes. These are only a few of the many dishes they got to experience.
Developing their business skills, students asked to try their hands at an in-school fundraiser for Valentine's Day. From creating the proposal to present to our administrators to outlining their marketing strategies, students got their first taste of the business side of culinary arts. With our administrators' approval, they created flyers and sold "Cookiegrams" and chocolate covered strawberries that were then delivered to students throughout the school on Valentine's Day. The students baked and packaged hundreds of cookies and over a hundred strawberries, all accomplished and delivered on a deadline.
For this coming year, we're hoping to expand our program with new opportunities. One topic that our students brought up time and again was the desire to take field trips, either to see professional cooking in action or to take part in cooking competitions.
Our most exciting opportunity coming up is the chance to refurbish the abandoned greenhouse that we have on our campus. With this, we'll be able to develop a Farm-to-Table program that allows our students the chance to grow their own food for their recipes. If we can raise the necessary funds through donations and grants, we'll even be able to build an aquaponics system that will allow our students and the students in the environmental science classes to study sustainable and responsible urban agriculture!
Of course, we can't manage big goals like this without the support of the community. For those that have given and made our initial program possible this past year, thank you! For those that would like to continue to help, every donation you make is a tremendous gift to our kids. If you have friends or colleagues that you think may be interested in the work we are doing, please pass this along and let them know.
Again, I cannot say it enough, thank you for the support you've offered in making this program possible. These are opportunities that every student should have access to, but until schools and districts are able to supply them on their own, it takes the greater community caring for our kids to make it happen.
This past year, I began a new chapter in my life as I started work in one of Metro Atlanta's numerous Title 1 schools. At this school, I teach 9th and 10th grade English Language Arts to students who, the majority of which, come to me with reading levels between 4th and 7th grade. It is nothing like the school environment I had growing up, and it is not an environment that is always conducive to learning, but it is the school where these kids have to go and it is their only shot at getting the education they need to become the professionals and leaders that will change our community for the better down the road.
This past year, it was a privilege and a blessing to get to know my students. The school they have to attend is a rough place to be. The neighborhoods they live in are tough places to survive. The stories they brought with them and shared with me broke my heart time and time again.
These students became my kids. They were not some statistic. They were not some subgroup to be objectified. They were not some faceless part of South Metro Atlanta that had nothing to do with me. They are my kids, and I want them to have every chance they deserve.
To my surprise, in the midst of teaching English, I found a new way that I could help some of my most difficult kids. In one of our bellringer assignments, I asked what they wanted to do after high school. When I read that a good number had dreams of going into culinary arts, I found a connection with them that I hadn’t even known was there.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, my mother told me one summer break, after I asked for something to eat, “You know where the kitchen is.” That day I started out frying a piece of bologna and now, 26 years later, I cook roast duck for our annual Christmas Feast. From that day on, I have developed a love of cooking that has never dwindled. In the Boy Scouts, I cooked five course meals on campouts under the stars. After college, I worked for a year as a cook in a restaurant kitchen. As an adult, I continue to cook and host dinners for friends and family.
So when I learned that some of my students had the same passion I do, I saw where I could help in a unique way.
The limits of our current curriculum:
In recent years, our school district has made a huge push to have students be college ready when they leave. To a degree, they give lip service about being career ready, as well; however, with a strictly liberal arts focus, this only prepares students for a narrow field of jobs.
But this was not always the case. Our schools used to have preparatory classes for trade jobs as well. In fact, the school at which I work still has the defunct garage and bodyshop for the automotive class that was discontinued. Presently, the district has a few focus schools that feature classes for only one trade or another, but this curriculum is inaccessible to students who can only go to the school in the area where their parent(s) happens to live and work.
So as it stands, high school for many of these students is frustrating because they know that what they really need in order to prepare for the work they want won’t be found in our classrooms. Understanding this, it’s no wonder that they act out and misbehave. As one of our veteran teachers put it when he was speaking about how it was in the past with the trade classes, “At least then they had a reason to behave in your class when they knew it meant participating in the automotive class that they actually enjoyed and got something out of.”
How I can help my students:
Because of my own cooking experience, I can start a Culinary Arts Club after school for those students that are looking into culinary arts as their vocation. With my personal experience and the connections I have with other professionals in the field, I can bring my students the resources that might give them that head start and real preparation for the work they want to do after they leave my classroom.
What our students will receive:
For their participation and commitment to the program, I want to be able to provide each student with a standard chef coat and hat. It has been proven that when you are able to dress the part then you are more likely to play the part. The very dress code we will require in the club will signify that what we are doing after school is no mere extracurricular game, but the serious business of preparing for a professional life.
Through this club, we will cover basic professional kitchen skills: sanitation, food prep, plating, etc. We will cover cooking skills that will be essential in the home kitchen and a restaurant: nutritional requirements, meal planning, sauté, sauces, soups, slow cooking, etc. We will cover business skills: professionalism, marketing, budgeting, etc. We will even sneak in other academic material: physical science (e.g. pressure cooking and how it works), chemical science (e.g. baking), and mathematics (e.g. measurement conversions, recipe size adjustments, and budgeting).
While the students will not receive any credits that would show up on their academic transcripts, they will be participating in a program that they can include in their resumés to help them standout from other candidates when they apply to culinary art schools and restaurant positions.
Lastly, this kind of program helps teach kids life skills that so many young people are lacking now. Not only will we be teaching them how to be professionals, we’ll be teaching them how to be adults.
What you can do to help:
To make this work, my students and I need your support. The school where I teach has a full kitchen setup in a classroom that is perfect for teaching culinary arts, but we need more than just the kitchen space.
Before we can get this program off the ground I will need to purchase the following materials: uniforms (chef coat and hat); knives; basic cooking utensils; pots and pans; cutting boards; measuring cups/spoons; towels; sponges; soap; basic dish-, glass-, and silverware; and ingredients.
I will be looking for the best deals (including thrift stores and donations) on most items; and those that have to be new, such as uniforms and ingredients, I’ll be buying at the cheapest price possible.
Here’s a basic breakdown:
Uniforms for 15 students, $30 per = $450
Pans = $75
Knives = $30
Dish service for 12 = $60
Silverware for 15 = $60
Utensils/cutting board/towels/etc. = $50
Ingredients for one year ($15 per week for 32 weeks) = $480
GoFundMe service fees = 8%
TOTAL = $1,300.00
Any donations over our goal amount will allow us to expand the program in several ways. We can add more students. We can take trips to visit professional kitchens. We can teach more recipes each week.
Where I teach:
Lastly, because this is a school so different from the ones with which many of my friends would be familiar in more affluent school districts, let me briefly share with you the school environment in which I work. At this point, I’m not sharing just to let you know why this kind of program is so important for my kids, but it is also to help you understand why teaching where I do is so important to me.
Our students' breakfasts and lunches are entirely subsidized so that many of them can at least get a balanced meal during the day when they cannot get one at home. Many of our students come from low-income, single parent homes. For these families, the most cost effective shopping list is the least healthy. I often ask, how can a student learn when they are hungry?
The neighborhoods in which many of my students live are torn apart by gang violence. The violence they have to deal with at home follows them to school. We have multiple fights throughout the school on a nearly daily basis. I had multiple fights in my own classroom throughout the year. I often ask, how can a student learn when they can't even feel safe?
Our classes are filled beyond capacity. The average size of my 10th grade class was 35 students. I had more students than I had student desks in my classroom. All told, I was responsible for approximately 200 students each semester. It is impossible for any teacher to give adequate individual attention to that many students. I often ask, how can a student learn when they aren’t even given adequate space to learn?
Our district is short on funds and supplies. When it came time for the 10th grade English classes to read Animal Farm as part of our required curriculum, we could only get our hands on four physical copies of the book in the entire school, and our request to the district weeks before for more copies was never answered. I often ask, how can a student learn when they don’t even have access to the material that the curriculum requires?
For most of my students, they have no say in where they go to school. They are just kids, after all. It is simply determined by where their parents can find work and where they live.
When faced with such a broken system, it would be easy to come up with excuses. It would be easy to simply say, “It’s not the kid’s fault, but the parents should have just tried harder and moved somewhere else.” But I can’t justify abandoning a child just because I can shift the blame. It would be easy to simply say, “It’s a tough break for that kid, but that’s just how it is.” But I can’t justify letting a child grow up like that in my city just because I can blame fate. It would be easy to simply say, “These kids prove they don’t want better with the behavior they demonstrate.” But I can’t give up on a child just because they did what any child would do: they learned from the environment around them. It would be easy to simply say, “The system here is just too broken, I would be better off in a district where I can do more good.” But so many of my kids have suffered from enough abandonment in their lives that I can’t bring myself to leave them behind now.
I wish you could meet my kids. I wish you could hear each of their stories of how they’ve grown up and their dreams of where they want to be in the future. While getting to know my kids the way I do may be impossible for you, I hope that you’ll be able to help me here so that I can do more to help them. None of us alone can fix this problem, but with your help, I pray that we can do what little bit of good we can.
Thank you, in advance, for all your support!
One Year Update!
One year ago, I asked for help in creating a culinary arts program for my students in a school where resources are always in need and opportunities for vocational growth can be hard to come by. One year ago, people from all across Atlanta and beyond pitched in to make this program come to life.
For all those that have helped, I want to let you know what we accomplished this past year and what we are planning to do this coming year to expand the program.
Over the past year, our Culinary Art Club met every week to learn the skills needed for home and professional cooking. Students practiced knife work, including making fine garnishes. They worked on baking, including making English scones and pizzas from scratch. Students explored French cuisine as they learned how to use an authentic crepe pan and made apple cinnamon crepes. These are only a few of the many dishes they got to experience.
Developing their business skills, students asked to try their hands at an in-school fundraiser for Valentine's Day. From creating the proposal to present to our administrators to outlining their marketing strategies, students got their first taste of the business side of culinary arts. With our administrators' approval, they created flyers and sold "Cookiegrams" and chocolate covered strawberries that were then delivered to students throughout the school on Valentine's Day. The students baked and packaged hundreds of cookies and over a hundred strawberries, all accomplished and delivered on a deadline.
For this coming year, we're hoping to expand our program with new opportunities. One topic that our students brought up time and again was the desire to take field trips, either to see professional cooking in action or to take part in cooking competitions.
Our most exciting opportunity coming up is the chance to refurbish the abandoned greenhouse that we have on our campus. With this, we'll be able to develop a Farm-to-Table program that allows our students the chance to grow their own food for their recipes. If we can raise the necessary funds through donations and grants, we'll even be able to build an aquaponics system that will allow our students and the students in the environmental science classes to study sustainable and responsible urban agriculture!
Of course, we can't manage big goals like this without the support of the community. For those that have given and made our initial program possible this past year, thank you! For those that would like to continue to help, every donation you make is a tremendous gift to our kids. If you have friends or colleagues that you think may be interested in the work we are doing, please pass this along and let them know.
Again, I cannot say it enough, thank you for the support you've offered in making this program possible. These are opportunities that every student should have access to, but until schools and districts are able to supply them on their own, it takes the greater community caring for our kids to make it happen.
Give $50 to help get this fundraiser to its goal
Organizer
Kenneth Hosley
Organizer
Anreep, GA
