Photo credit: Colleen Farris For the last five years, I’ve been fortunate to teach without an end-of-course standardized test. But in the seven years before that, I taught Culinary Arts in North Carolina, where state exams were required. I had to prepare students for a 100-question test at the end of the year, using a practice test bank, a textbook, and the provided lesson plans and materials. One experience crystallized for me how useless and misaligned these tests were with

Photo and video credits: Colleen Farris Music credit: Back to Ibiza ©Made by RoyaltyFreeMusic by pixabay via Canva. Cl ockwise from top left to bottom left: bridge, Incheon, ROK; walking path, Asan, ROK; The River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland; University of Galway, Galway, Ireland. My Starting Poi

Learning Theory in Culinary Arts Children’s learning occurs in social settings in which they are gradually introduced to and learn to use cultural-specific knowledge-building tools with the help of competent adults or peers.

Pizza without a recipe Image credit Jacob Pullman Testing a recipe for success If you read my previous two blog posts, Ten Dollar Words  and Interrogating Teaching Practice , you know that I have been doing some heavy theoretical lifting and introspection to learn how to “ do better ” in my teaching practice. Put all those tools and insights together, and you have a recipe for great teaching and learning. Want a taste? Keep reading. My Why My goal is to improve student knowle

Why, What if, and How to "do better" 24 July 2024 Image credit Colleen Farris “You know better!”  I always process how I think the school year went over the summer. This summer I asked myself why, at the end of the year, some students still were not demonstrating what they learned in the classroom when working in the kitchen. I found myself repeating “You know better! Show me what you know.” I started processing my thoughts about this phenomenon in my previous blog post entit