Natalia Andrews, 15, struggled at first to cut flounder fillets as she got used to working with the fish. They also practiced knife skills and earned the ServSafe Food Handler certificate to demonstrate that they know basic safety principles for food temperature, surface sanitation and cross-contamination prevention. The students learned how to prepare dishes including omelets, fresh fish and chicken, soups, side dishes such as collard greens and desserts including brownies from scratch. Students are ‘plugged in and thinking about opportunities’ Zeisler leads the culinary arts program at Virginia Western Community College and developed the curriculum for the program, which condenses a semester’s worth of cooking skills into a five-day sampler. Chef James Zeisler demonstrates a knife technique for Sariah Ibarra-Beoitnott, 16. Then it was time to learn everything they needed to know in order to present a buffet spread for about 40 guests at the end of the boot camp. There, they got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hotel Roanoke and learned resume and interviewing tips from the hotel’s HR team. The students attended an orientation before starting their week of culinary classes. Each session hosted a half-dozen students referred by counselors and school staff who identified them as likely to enjoy and benefit from the opportunity to get hands-on learning. The inaugural run of the free boot camp included two weeklong sessions this summer at the facility in the Gainsboro neighborhood of Northwest Roanoke. But it also served to expose them to career pathways in the culinary and hospitality fields - industries with a lot of hiring demand in the Roanoke region. The new program is a partnership between the community college, Roanoke City Public Schools, the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, and Park Roanoke to help keep students engaged when school’s out for the summer. The Culinary Arts Boot Camp at VWCC’s Claude Moore Education Complex offered them a taste of the culinary and hospitality industries, condensing many of the principles they’d practice over a semester-long high school career and technical education course into just five days. Instead, they were Roanoke high school students who had little or no experience working in a commercial kitchen. They weren’t experienced students of an advanced culinary program.
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