by Levi Briggs, December 22, 2017

Sometimes it’s difficult to find pleasure in our busy lives – between my full-time job, working towards a bachelor’s degree, and volunteering as a wrestling coach, I feel like I’m constantly rushing to meet deadlines.  Despite all the running around and seemingly never-ending craziness, there is one event I look forward to every month called “The Teaching Kitchen.”

I am the executive chef at York College and once a month I have the opportunity to lead approximately twenty students in a cooking class.  The Teaching Kitchen is a course I helped design in which the students learn to cook an entire meal from scratch.  We spend about two and a half hours together and instead of the kids watching me cook the meal, they do the cooking.

I am very proud and honored to have turned our kitchen at the college into a scratch kitchen – approximately 85% of our menu is now made from scratch.  It was important to me to not only serve the students better food, but to also teach them how to make it.  This is, by far, the most rewarding aspect of my career.

During each class the kids and I take each menu item step by step.  I often pull about four people from the staff to help circulate around the room and engage the students.  We always set aside three hours for each class because after they cook the meals, we all sit down and eat together.

After every class, the students are given evaluation forms to fill out, and so far, all the feedback has been positive.  The only complaint has been that we don’t have as many classes as they’d like!  This is very gratifying to me.