BE OUR GUEST: PROVIDING TEACHERS WITH DINNER

While staying late at school for PLPs from Wednesday, March 25th to Friday, March 27th, numerous teachers gathered in Intro to Foods & Nutrition and Advanced Foods & Nutrition teacher Wendy Paiva’s classroom to enjoy a dinner that was prepared by students in Intro to Foods & Nutrition, Advanced Foods & Nutrition, and Culinary Arts. This dinner was a way for students to showcase their skills they have learned so far in their culinary classes while also providing the hardworking teachers with homemade dishes. 

To showcase their knife skills, the students in Intro to Foods & Nutrition prepared a wide variety of salads, such as seven layer salad, broccoli & cauliflower salad, and grape salad. These salads were a popular choice among teachers and earned an average rating of 4.47 stars out of five in a survey sent out to teachers. In the same survey, these salads tied with the Advanced Foods students’ calico beans as the third most popular dish among the teachers.

Students preparing meals to feed our well deserving teachers during PLPs; Photo by Wendy Paiva

To practice working with chicken, the students in Advanced Foods & Nutrition prepared slow cooker BBQ chicken and marry me chicken breasts. They also prepared side dishes, such as cheesy hashbrowns, calico beans, and saffron rice. Their marry me chicken breasts and cheesy hashbrowns earned the first and second highest rated dishes, with the marry me chicken earning an average rating of 4.77 stars and the cheesy hashbrowns earning an average of 4.63 stars. These two dishes were also the two most popular favorites among teachers, with the marry me chicken being first and the cheesy hashbrowns being second. 

To highlight their yeast bread making abilities, the students in Culinary Arts made focaccia and hamburger buns. While these two dishes were not in the top three highest rated, they were fairly close with the focaccia earning an average rating of 3.67 stars and the hamburger buns earning an average of 3.29 stars. 

Although the students in these culinary classes put a lot of effort into making these dishes, the incredible effort of the two culinary teachers contributed greatly to making this dinner happen. Wendy Paiva, the Intro to Foods and Advanced Foods teacher, and Megan Overholser, the Culinary Arts teacher, both put a lot of time and effort into organizing this dinner to make it the best it can be. 

Overall, this dinner was a great success. The average rating of the overall quality of the dishes was 4.63 stars out of five, and when asked if they would want there to be another PLP dinner in the future, 94.7% of the teachers responded with “Yes” and the other 5.3% responded with “Maybe.” Many teachers expressed excitement for another PLP dinner. Two of these teachers include Adam Szurkowski, who said, “I am looking forward to the next one!”, and Chrissy Berlin, who said, “I really hope this becomes a tradition!”.