Lately....

I've been spending my "free" (professional development) time dipping into numerous volumes of information - from differentiation to socratic seminars and homework/grading philosophies. Posts will be forth coming on most of those topics but most recently, I've been digging into information and background of courses like Baking and Pastry. Why? Well, our department noticed an overlap in what we were teaching students so we combined two courses into one so we could offer a new, college-articulated course called Baking and Pastry.

This has been a journey, like most things not simple, that ended in a fruitful bounty! I began by researching other schools in the state that had similar courses, concentrating on districts most closely situated to Shakopee. I created a survey for our current Foods 1 and 2 students, asking how many would actually take a course like that and if so, what course they would replace in their current schedule. before we went ahead, we needed to identify if this was even something students would take. Being an elective, our course offerings and their interest and relevance to the students (and to college credit opportunities) are critical to our survival. After surveying our students, we found that most said they would take it instead of a study hall! This was good news as we didn't want to necessarily pull from other courses.

I created this beautiful packet for presentation on what the course would entail and our research findings. At the time, it didn't move forward - for various reasons. This year, the department head suggested we try again and we were met with SUCCESS!

This is incredibly exciting and something I really like to learn about! I'm hoping I can find grant money (Perkins) to allow me to take the actual college course this summer and learn all the great techniques to being a successful wizard in the baking and pastry kitchen. Until then, I'm identifying other districts who offer this course and pulling resources that may become very helpful for curriculum writing. I'm reading textbooks and very detailed cooking books to pull key information.

Obviously, the content is very exciting but I truly do believe that curriculum writing is a HUGE passion of mine. To start with a vision and articulate all the various details on how to precisely get to that vision is fun to me and I'm so eager to get started. I've even started my bank of essential questions.............

Until the next time!