5 Simple Ways to Teach Expectations when Cooking with a Guest Chef
Too often we think by junior high and high school, our students should have mastered manners and etiquette. We think they should understand how to behave when there is a guest speaker or chef. However, it doesn’t take long to realize our students are not coming to us with manners, etiquette, and experiences as they previously had.
The last few years have greatly changed the students we have in the classroom. It doesn’t have to prevent us from giving them new opportunities to help them grow as polite and respectful humans. In fact, if we don’t offer these experiences, we cannot expect them to tactfully master the necessary life skills they will need long after our classroom.
A recent experience proved why it is important to take more time to proper teach and set expectations to make for an enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
My students had the opportunity to work with a local personal chef. She was a student in the same classroom when she was in junior high and volunteered to work with them on her day off. It was an incredible and delicious experience, but I was not pleased with my students’ behavior.
The students working with her are my advanced class. They are great kids, but after I reflected on the experience, I realized I should have covered expectations more than I did.
Here are five simple, but necessary ways you can better prepare your students when working with a guest chef.
Preparing for a guest chef
Likely the day before the guest chef arrives, it is a prime opportunity to talk about student roles in the classroom.
If students don’t have a particular task to complete, what are your expectations? Can students stand around talking to each other or should they gather near the guest chef to learn and take in the experience.
During my cooking labs, all students have a job, which keeps them busy. When working with a guest chef, there was more down time and students were standing around and chatting. I would have preferred for them to stand around the prep table where the chef was preparing food to ask questions and learn from this opportunity.
For our particular experience, students worked with the guest chef for 5th and 6th hours to create an extensive meal. Students did miss school lunch, but had an abundance of food to eat when it was prepared.
Teaching manners
Gone are the days when our students automatically come to school with manners. I wouldn’t rule out many of them were taught manners and it’s simply the teenager stage, but reminding students of manners is key.
I almost fell over dead when I had students loudly announce, “I’m not eating that. Can I go get school lunch?”
With our students, a pre-cooking pep talk about tactful ways to try the food. Even the students who went for school food ended up loving food that was prepared, but weren’t as willing to try it while it was being prepped.
With the exception of allergies, such as a student with cilantro, I think it’s acceptable to expect students to try a bite.
If students try the food and don’t actually like it, then students could bring lunch from home or quietly slip out to the lunchroom. There isn’t a need to loudly announce they wouldn’t be trying the food and wanted school lunch instead.
Setting expectations
I have very clear expectations during cooking labs, but with the increase in down time, students needed a clear reminder.
In this experience, the guest chef was prepping most of the food due to time constraints. With this added downtime, I had students sitting on the floor and hanging on each other.
Setting clear expectations ahead of time allows students a clear reminder what to do when if they have down time, if they don’t have a specific job, and if they find themselves bored.
My students are aware they should be washing dishes, doing laundry, or sweeping/mopping when they are without a task. A mixture of end of the year behavior, entitled behavior, and usual teenage behavior really took over in this situation.
Engaging with the guest chef
Teachers naturally talk aloud when going through the motions. However, those that don’t teach don’t always talk aloud or share their thoughts.
Prepare students for appropriate questions to help keep the lines of communication open is a great way for students to engage with the chef.
Some questions might include learning more about the schooling and what that looks like. What does a typical day look like? What are the best and the hardest parts of the job? What are the favorite dishes to make for themselves and for others?
Gathering near the prep table and chef provide for great opportunities with the chef to learn proper knife skills and flavor combinations.
Post-visit reflection and feedback
Of course, after the experience, students should be writing a thank you note and sharing a favorite part.
Even proper thank you card etiquette should be taught. We cannot assume students already know the expectations for writing thank you cards.
In addition to a thank you note, have students reflect on the experience. What would they recommend changing for future opportunities or future classes?
Not all feedback will be worthwhile and teenagers will be teenagers, but there are always some nuggets of wisdom that can be meaningful.
Having this opportunity and the disappointment in my students’ behavior, it would be easy to blame them and not plan events like this in the future.
After some time to reflect, I realized I could have been more explicit with my expectations. I needed to spend more time preparing them for this type of experience. And without opportunities like this, students won’t learn how to behave for future opportunities.
Family and Consumer Science is a class about life skills. We cannot take away opportunities simply because our students aren’t behaving well. Instead, we need to use these opportunities more often as a way to help regain the behavior and expectations we want to see in our students.
We cannot expect change if we are not willing to put in the effort to properly teach those expectations.