My experience teaching in the cafeteria has been a valuable learning experience. Compared to teaching in a foods classroom, teaching in the cafeteria kitchen placed more emphasis on managing the students and the cooking staff. As the majority of each class was spent in the kitchen, building a strong rapport with the cooking staff and students was what made my experience both enjoyable and manageable. As the practical portion of the cafeteria course, each student worked in different cooking stations every two weeks, where a cooking staff instructed them on their job of the day. My responsibility in the cafeteria was to organize these stations, check-in with how students were doing, mark students after each class on their kitchen performance, check the groceries list, teach students how to set-up food to be sold at break and lunch, make sure students cleaned the kitchen at the end of the day, and managed any outside catering orders. Yet apart from managing the kitchen when the students were cooking, 10-15 minutes each class was set aside for a theory-based lesson. In the first unit that I taught on baking, multimodal activities such as, discussion lessons, comparison activities, matching activities, powerpoint slides, project-based learning, fill in the blanks, were incorporated to teach each of the concepts.
An example of a ‘types of pastry’ project done by a group of students during the baking unit.
Types of assessments implemented:
Assessment for learning
-Students marked on their kitchen performance.
-Formative assessment included creating a project on the different types of pastry. For this project, students worked in groups of 2-3, and picked one type of pastry to research. Research topics included: when was it invented and from which country, ingredients required to make that specific pastry, mixing technique(s) used, and examples of products. In addition to the research, students were asked to present their findings in a creative and informative manner. The project was marked on accuracy of research material, creativeness, and an effective and engaging presentation.
Assessment of learning
-Students wrote a unit test (multiple choice, true/ false, and fill in the blanks) at the end of the baking unit.