2011 Issue of IJ-SoTL now Available Online for Free!

Alan Altany has announced that the July 2011 issue of International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (IJ-SoTL) is available free and online at http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v5n2.html

This online publication is always worth a peek because it may include tested teaching methods that you can apply in your culinary kitchen or classroom.  Perhaps you could even do a teaching experiment of your own someday and get it published in this fine online journal.  I would even offer you my assistance to get the article ready for review.

If wanting to know more about Dr Altany and his work on SoTL, here is his contact information:
Alan Altany, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Teaching, Learning & Scholarship
http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/cet/
Editor, International Journal for SoTL
http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/
Chair, SoTL Commons Conference
http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/conference/
Coordinator, SoTL at Georgia Southern
http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlgsu/

Georgia Southern University
Statesboro, Georgia, USA 30460-8143
Email: aaltany@georgiasouthern.edu

Fair Food

I may have indicated in previous blog posts that I read at least two books a week.  I am an educator and I hold my feet to the fire to stay educated.  I tend to read nonfiction that somehow relates to the world of food production and consumption because it is vital to our very existence as a species on Earth and an industry that we love -- especially now by teaching it to others to prepare them for the rough and tumble career that awaits replete with many joys and sorrows.

The book I just finished is called Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable, Food System For All by Oran B. Hesterman, Ph.D.  It is a WONDERFUL book indeed and cannot recommend it highly enough.  Why?  Because I have read a littany of books that speak to what is wrong with the way we grow, process, serve food, and consume food at home and food service outlets which are DAMN DEPRESSING!  This book tells many, many stories about what people, communities, schools and businesses are doing to turn the tide and make things right in the world of food production and consumption.

The author was a former professor of agronomy at Michigan State and co-led the Integrated Farming Systems and Food and Society Programs for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, during which time the Foundations seeded the local food systems movement with over $200 million.  He pours out his vast knowledge into the pages of this book.  For example, he started Fair Food Network in Detroit to encourage people to spend their food assistance dollars in the local farmers' market, which was later implemented in other American cities for good reason.  He also speaks to programs like School Food Focus that was started in St. Paul. MN, to encourage school districts to increase the percentage of locally grown produce it purchased to serve in the school and reduce the sugar content in milk.  There is also Farm to School which connects educational institutions with local farms that has captured the imagination of tens of thousands of educators, parents, students, volunteers, community leaders, and farmers across the country.  And there are countless other stories about those leading the effort to produce and consume foods that are locally produced and healthy to eat.

Best of all there is a final chaper devoted to resources one can get in touch with to learn learn more and get actively involved.  I will share many of them in blog posts down the road but for now the chapter is broken into resources for: Consumers (such as CSA Farming, Eat Well Guide); Urban Agriculture Food Systems (such as Fair Food Philly, People's Grocery); Business Incubators and Related Resources (such as Kitchen Chicago); Hunger Food Security; and Food Access, Youth Development and Food Systems (such as The Edible School Yard); Education / Research Centers and Programs; Farmer Training, Networks, and Resources; Institutional Purchasing; Environment and Conservation; Activist Networks (such as Farm Aid); and Policy Advocacy Networks.

So pick it up at a local bookseller and support your local economy while enriching your mind with what is capable when people work together to do right by others around food.  Your students depend on it.

Most Children Left Behind

Many believe, as do I, that the trouble with the public education system is that it has not evolved from what it was originally intended to do, prep kids to work in manufacturing based jobs or educate those who were living on the farms when not planting and harvesting crops to educate a nation.  It was also developed during a time when there were not as many distractions for children as there are these days from the advance of technology.  No wonder it is difficult for kids to sit in a classroom all day long when their world is abuzz with distractions.  Case in point, my son was playing a hand held game device a few years ago (10 years old) when we were taking a extended ride in the car.  He asked me if I had a similar device when I was a kid.  I told him "no, we did not."  He gave me an incredulous look and asked what we used to play with when we were kids.  I told him we used our imagination!  Heck, when I was a kid we used to play army and use our finger for a pistol and a long stick for a rifle -- when kids play army today they have air soft guns that look like the real thing, dress in camouflage gear, and go out on patrol.

That is why you may very well enjoy this 11 minute presentation by Aaron Lewis on public education.  He speaks to the heart of the matter and lays out the key problems in public education.  If you listen carefully enough he is suggesting that we stop doing the same shit they do in K-12 when kids come to our campuses and get them engaged in the learning especially with each other for maximum learning.  Check it out and see what you think at  the following URL:
http://www.youtube.com/user/aaronlewis321?email=share_video_user

Perhaps the entire public school system has gotten to the "OK Plateau" I mentioned in last blog post.

Are You at the OK Plateau?!

Since I have been teaching for 20 years, I do not hold much stock in standardized course evaluations.  Indeed I have been reading the littany of research that has to do with student evaluations of teaching (SET) and convinced now more than ever that they are but one limited method by which to assess the quality of one's teaching from the students perspective.  I will be sharing this research in future posts.
As a result, I piloted an in depth SET with help from the students who took my spring human resource management course under the auspices of employee performance evaluation. The purpose of the activity was to allow students to apply what they were learning about employee performance evaluation to the context of teaching and get a richer more meaningful understanding of what it is like to be a student at Purdue.

The students answered five essay questions which essentially asked them to describe their dream teacher, describe the typical professor they have had at Purdue across all classes, the one course evaluation item they would pick to assess the quality of a professor’s teaching, how they would evaluate teaching if President of Purdue, and how I compared to their dream teacher and what could be done to do a better job.

The studentst took to this essay assignment like never before on written assignments.  There were no questions on "how many words" or "how many pages?"  They poured their hearts into the assignment because they need to be heard and they knew I would listen because I give a damn. 

I will tell you that I learned a great deal about what students want from teachers and it is pretty simple; someone who likes what they do, engages students in the learning, dresses professionally, enthusiastic, prepares them for the career that awaits them upon graduation, and can speak English. I sadly learned that students do not experience their dream teacher very often at Purdue.   What about your school, college or university?

The response to the last question pertaining to my teaching made my heart sink.  The students basically told me that I have reached the “OK Plateau” in teaching the human resource management class, which was described in Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein with respect to learning a new skill (a book I constantly recommended during all the ACF regional workshops I did this past spring). To get to the OK Plateau people go through three stages:

o Cognitive stage – intellectualizing the task and discovering new strategies to accomplish it more proficiently.

o Associative stage – concentrating less, making fewer major errors, and generally becoming more efficient.

o Autonomous stage – when you figure that you’ve gotten as good as you need to get at the task you’re running on autopilot.

Based on the feedback from students they told me I appeared to be on autopilot (Ok Plateau). Yes, I was dressing professional and enthusiastic as always but I was not digging down deep and giving student’s current information on HR in the hospitality industry and I was teaching them in an old and tired manner. I took each and every comment to heart because teaching defines me like nothing else in my life so I pledged to those students that I would reinvent myself and the class to be more current and engaging when I teach it in spring 2012. In fact, I am going to do more cooperative learning as I had used successfully early in my career at Purdue. I will also look at ways to improve the HTM 331 class for fall 2011 and the HTM class for HTM 100. I got low scores on the exam course evaluation items for HTM 100 so will look for ways to make that more fair when teaching it in 2012.

So I am putting the question to those who follow the blog.  Are you at the OK Plateau?  Are you showing up for class, going through the motions, putting in your time, and moving mindlessly through your day?  If you are, guess what, the students know it!  You are not fooling them one bit and they are paying you for your services.  That was how they were feeling about my teaching this past spring and had I not taken the time to ask them for deep meaningful feedback I would still be under the illusion that I was doing quality instruction -- when indeed I was not!  Perhaps you might conduct a similar feedback session with your students, which I highly recommend because the results can be sobering.  Of course, that depends on whether you can handle the truth!

My Marriott Hotel

Marriott has developed an online game that could be fun to play and recruit new employees, too.  Those who play "My Marriott Hotel" will find themselves in the restaurant business and have to make decisions to keep the kitchen moving.  The game is as realistic an experience as possible to see what it takes to manage all aspects of the restaurant business from purchasing to service and more. 

I went to Facebook where the game is to be found and it is not ready to load yet but here is the URL that you can access if you have an account to download the App.
http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=My%20Marriott%20hotel&init=quick&tas=0.739057746431893&ref=ts#!/apps/application.php?id=145796492133388

According to an article in the Wall Street, Marriott chose to create this game due to the success the U.S. military had with its online game to recruit soldiers.  Also cited in the article was the success of Siemens AG which brought "Plantville," which simulates being a manager for bottling facility, a vitamin factory or a plant that builds trains.

In any event, this would be an EXCELLENT free tool to use in your restaurant management class for budding chefs to see if they can run a restaurant for Marriott.  The game is intended to be as realistic as possible.  According to a Marriott spokesman, those who who play the restaurant game will have to buy ingredients, such as cheese for spaghetti, after given an array of options in quality and price.  Players will also hire staff, purchase equipment and small wares.  During rounds in the kitchen, players have to direct tickets to cooks and inspect food orders for quality before sending them out to customers and more.

If you do choose to use this game in your class please let me know so we can share with others on the blog.  I am teaching the restaurant class this fall at Purdue and once I navigate it I will look into using it to establish extra credit points or something.  Time will tell.

The Pyramid is Dead!

If you are up on food politics in this country you know that the food pyramid has been under attack by those whose financial futures are tied to their influence over what American's eat, whether it is good for them to do so or not.  For example, the first pyramid design was unpopular to some because those food groups at the top were not happy that it indicated to Americans to eat less meat, for example.  Then the pyramid was revised to have slivers, more or less, running from the base to the tip to indicate what percentage of daily foods should be eaten from the basic food groups and there were still those who did not care for that design either especially if your food group was the smallest sliver.  For more information on this subject read Marion Nestles Food Politics or follow her work on her website at: http://www.foodpolitics.com/

Anyhow, the food pyramid is no more, it has been replaced by a plate, which is what most Americans eat from anyway so it makes sense compared to the pyramid.  Regardless of what one thinks about the food items that were included or excluded from the food groups on the new plate concept I think it is a more common sense approach to educating Americans on what should appear on their plates or in their drinking glass at each meal.  You can check it out for yourself and draw your own conclusions at http://www.choosemyplate.gov/index.html

I especially like the link to Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010 and Michelle Obama's efforts to end childhood obesity through Let's Move, which I reported on in an earlier blog post.  What I do not like is an aspect that is found on the food pyramids used by other countries which has exercise at the base or people running up the side -- how sad!

I guess when all is said and done it is still up to us in culinary and hospitality programs to educate ourselves and our students on serving more healthy foods based on dietary guidelines to the dining public without compromising profitability.  Afterall, when McDonalds's, the King of QSR, is revising its menu to add more healthy items it is time for academics to get ahead of the curve and do what we can to support our industry finds its way down the path of healthy eating.  Besides, it is truly sad when one realizes that there are hundreds and thousands of people in the country who have contracted diseases they would not have were it not for their inability to stop shoving garbage in their mouths and engage in regular physical activity.  if you stop to think about it, we could do our part to help reduce the cost of health care in this country by doing our best to help Americans make better food choices on a regular basis and indulge on occasion and myplate might help us in that regard.