When teaching culinary- it's hard to say "well that's only a B"- because it's very hard to define right and wrong sometimes. We have developed a system at our school that uses a 5 point grading system for EACH ITEM (some classes- each student may be required to produce upto 9 items a day, on their own- all which require individual grades) It's also hard because what may be too salty to me, may be perfect to someone else. I may prefer simple plate presentations, whereas other instructors prefer more elaborate plate presentations. Something such as the latter is up… >>>

When I do my demo (usually of meat fabrication that sometimes takes a bit of idol time) I ask questions about what they were suppose to read last night and bring up points that I know will be on the test(s). Occassionally I'll get the deer in headlights look from them so I'll say ok "let's start at the beginning" So instead of just telling them the answer, or telling them they need to go read about it, I go back to a point that I know they know (backtrack basically)and start asking them questions that they know/ can figure… >>>

Well, as many of you talk about your classrooms, my classroom is a kitchen. So the decorations in the classroom, I don't need to worry about- nor the lighting. But I do have a little space on the walls here and there that I try to decorate. I use pictures of food (of course)- pictures of meat cuts- and then over tool box, I have a several framed pictures of color chips I got at the hardware store, all arranged in some sort of order. I numbered each color. this is always a conversation piece! What I use this chart… >>>