People often think that culinary just focuses on cooking and baking, learning measurements and temperatures, but they didn’t notice that culinary not only helps with the cooking part, but with so much more. The CTE class not only focuses on the basic knowledge for baking/cooking, but also helps build character. Chef Jones, Pahrump Valley High School’s Culinary Arts teacher, explains “Being accountable, and on time, working hard, taking initiative, and thinking for yourself, kind of what employers look for. We focus a lot on fostering independence.” She helps build independence and character development by pressuring kids to cook under stressful moments and push them to their limits. It helps them learn from their mistakes faster and makes them more accurate as they go on.
She makes them focus and write notes down on everything because as she explained it, “You use kitchen skills literally everyday, and it’s very important to know how to cook for yourself because it’s an everyday skill we need.”If you’re gonna cook for yourself for the rest of your life you might as well learn to do it well. Chef Jones believe that when you repeat things in your head and continuously practice at it you are guaranteed to get better at it, it just takes time and effort
Chef Jones explains how in the cooking industries your job is never permanent. When working as a chef, or anything cooking related, you are never in one place for too long. She explained how she was a chef, a private chef, and held many seasonal jobs. Chef Jones explained that her jobs “changed constantly.” She got into teaching culinary because she met all the requirements that were needed. She described it as a “happy accident.” Her cooking desires have always been around since she was a kid. She says, “I was always the kid making mud
pies.” It only grew when she was in high school. She said, “I enjoyed watching them eat the food I cooked. It made me feel good that they liked the food I cooked.”
Madisyn Donaldson, a freshman who takes the culinary CTE class, stated, “We play a lot of simulations and games to kind of get the cooking feel, and it expands our thinking when coming up with ideas.” Cooking is genuinely all about creativity and when you know more about foods and how to blend them it makes the experience 10 times better and it’ll be worth the time put into the class. Donaldson said that the culinary class definitely expanded her thinking on food options and she knows more about the stuff she makes and eats.
Culinary expands so much more than just learning food, it helps you mentally and it prepares you for real life struggles by working under pressure, and creative advice. But we also learned how it helped and what it could help us improve. It teaches you how to cook for yourself as well as build yourself. If you see Chef Jones around the campus, ask her about her work experiences!
