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Culinary apprenticeship program in Syracuse, NY - a personal brainstorm
My background:
- Taught Spanish at Syracuse University in most years since 1991.
- Currently teaching Spanish at OCC and ESL at the English Language Institute.
- Have tutored almost ages - 12 to 72.
- Real estate investor since 2001, creator/admin of CNY landlords' email group.
- Walkable Eastwood webmaster - its email group has 100 members, all Eastwood neighbors.
But its the young people
who really interest me.
Both
of my sons, now 22 and 28, had challenges that made it difficult for
them to be successful in public school. Diagnosed with ADHD,
they both
ended up getting a good deal of their schooling outside of the schools.
Mike left when he was 16 to go to OCC and start a business. He is now
employed at Welch Allyn and
on the side is developing an electric
motorcycle. Scott left school
when he was 13 to be homeschooled. He
earned his GED through BOCES,
culinary certification through Job Corps,
and two degrees from the Culinary
Institute of America. He is an
artisan bread baker in Napa, California.
Scott's successes developed out of a very problematic adolescence.
Suffice to say that some of his friends from those years are now doing
time. But we allowed him to work from age 14, and it was the chefs of
Syracuse who taught him the discipline and teamwork necessary to
succeed in "the real world."
My vision for a culinary
apprenticeship program starts with these ideas:
Learning culinary skills can only be
done hands-on, precisely the kind of learning that many of these
kids
need. There are too many kinetic learners who end up believing
they are
failures because in the school setting they cannot be taught in the way
they
need to learn.
Many different skills are
required for success in a restaurant kitchen: math, knife
skills, teamwork, promptness, respect for
others, and at the higher levels, customer interaction, design (culinary plating and pastry design), physics,
chemistry... it goes on!
Having culinary skills means you can
work just about anywhere, any time. A good dishwasher, prep
cook, saute
chef, sous chef... they always have jobs waiting for them somewhere.
It's
sexy to be a good chef. The top ones are almost as visible as
top
sports figures. There is something to aspire to. People love
you if you cook for them!
We can learn from Mayor Pat McCrory of Charlotte, NC, who
actively
recruited Johnson & Walesto
open a school in Charlotte in part because the graduates would raise
restaurant standards in the city. In 2008, Charlotte was named a
“100
Best Communities for Youth” by America’s Promise for the
third year in
a row (see
this website). Great cooking makes for great economic development,
too.
Such a program might involve doing any of the following:
-
Identify a small number of kids (to start with) who have any
passion at
all for food and the work it takes to produce it. Ideally you start at
the middle school level.
- Get these kids working
one-on-one with chefs in the area. Ask
chefs if they would spend one hour per month working one-on-one with a
kid in their own restaurant kitchen. All they have to do is teach the
most basic skills they would require of a dishwasher and prep
cook.
- Partner with OCC and other institutions. Could they offer anything to middle school as well as high school kids? University students could teach the kids many skills and concepts needed in the workplace.
- Teach them Spanish. It is the language of the kitchen and Spain has eclipsed France as the culinary capital of the world. Spanish-speaking kids could peer teach. Also, teach them spoken standard American English, as a second or foreign language if necessary.
- Open a training restaurant, starting with just lunch. We might want to create along the lines of the community kitchen idea, so that it is more completely integrated with the community. The One World Everybody Eats website provides a guide for developing such a kitchen. Another model is Cafe Reconcile in New Orleans.
- Eventually bring in other aspects of the culinary world that might be of interest. For example, Syracuse is increasingly becoming sophisticated about coffee. Students who excel in their studies (including Spanish) could aim for a trip to Costa Rica to do coffee tastings at the source, for example
- Tie in with local wine and beer producers. Teach wine and beer pairing. Associate alcoholic beverages with a sophisticated palate, not with getting drunk.
- Create a strong link between Syracuse's green efforts and the culinary efforts. Make use of our fabulous farmers' markets and local Community Supported Agriculture groups. For instance, the training restaurant could advertise that it uses local products exclusively. Teach sustainable eating and dining-out.
- Bring in the arts from the beginning. If we can brand Syracuse as a city that cooks and eats green, then we want to advertise that in our public places. Instead of a horse statue on every other block, how about fanciful food items?
- Bring in famous chefs. Once we're on the map, they might love to come here. Make them accessible to a Don't charge more than a couple dollars to get in to hear them. If anything.
"When I started teaching less, the children started learning more."
- John Holt, Learning All the Time, 1989