Gaylord High School to send 6 students to statewide culinary competition
GAYLORD — While some students may be getting ready for spring breaks and midterms, six students from Gaylord High School are preparing to head downstate for the ProStart Culinary Competition.
The students start competing March 5 at the Blue Water Convention Center in Port Huron.
Students from the school will be competing in four different areas, including the knife competition, the culinary team, the ServSafe Knowledge Bowl Team and the cake decorating team.
According to culinary arts teacher Laura Korff, the program and competition is an opportunity for students to put the skills they learned in the classroom into practice.
In many of the competition categories, the first, second and third place winners can leave with culinary scholarships and opportunities, Korff said.
Five of the six students — Maddie Sides, Emma Donajkowski, Emma Topp, Ezra Spychalski and Ryder Winiger — will be competing on the culinary team and the ServSafe Knowledge Bowl Team. Winiger will be serving as an alternate on the two teams, with a role as a timer to ensure the group stays on track for the culinary competition, Korff said.
During the culinary team’s competition, the group must complete a three-course meal including a starter, entrée and dessert. The judges critique the group on their food transportation, sanitation, timing and communication. They also judge based on their costing of the menu and markup rates, as well as presentation.
The team competition will be held at 10 a.m. March 5.
The school will also be participating in more specific competitions.
During the knife competition, the contestants will have to select four knife cut options out of eight and present to the judges. Winiger will be competing in this category, starting at 3 p.m. March 5.
The ServSafe Knowledge Bowl team is a jeopardy-style quiz with teams answering questions that demonstrate their knowledge of the restaurant and food service industry. The quiz bowl will be held at 12:45 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. March 5.
The cake decorating competition, which is held between individuals, has competitors decorating styrofoam round as a cake. Teams are judged on their theme, icing, decorating, consistency and level of difficulty.
Sides and Laurel Milne will be competing for the school at 1:30 p.m. March 5.
"This is such a great opportunity for these students because some of these students never leave or never leave the state of Michigan even or have very limited opportunities to travel for whatever reason,” Korff said. “A lot of these kids get out of Gaylord and they just get to meet all kinds of people from different places from different backgrounds, and it really opens their eyes.
“There's probably over 300 students that are going to be at this competition in Port Huron this year and so they're going to get to meet the students with the activities that they have planned for the students. Sometimes they end up making good friends and keeping in touch with some of those students. It's just a great opportunity to get out and see different parts of the state that they may never have the opportunity to otherwise.”
Students that do well at the competition have a chance to earn a place at the National ProStart Invitational held in Washington D.C. May 2-4.
Korff has been working as a teacher at Gaylord since 1997. When she began working as the culinary arts teacher a year later, she had to build her own curriculum by finding her own resources. In 2012, she switched to the ProStart curriculum, and has had students attend the competition every year since.
The ProStart curriculum is a two-year program that unites the classroom with the restaurant industry, according to the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association Educational Foundation website. The curriculum combines the foundations of restaurant management, culinary arts and ServSafe guidelines.
In Northern Michigan, it is taught at Petoskey High School, Cheboygan High School, Boyne City High School, and the Traverse Bay ISD, along with Gaylord. However, Gaylord is the only school that participated in the March competition, Korff said.
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Students completing the program earn the industry-recognized ProStart National Certificate of Achievement after passing the level 1 and 2 exams as well as having 400 hours of experience outside of classroom time.
This year she has 18 students working in her block class, along with around 60 students in her three intro classes.
“The benefit of this program as a whole is readying students for the restaurant industry — it gives them a step up. A lot of this stuff that they're learning at the high school level, most students would not have the opportunity to do so unless they went to a culinary school after high school where they would have to pay $30,000-$40,000 a year to attend,” Korff said. "These students are getting a taste, or an introduction of what they would be getting should they go to a culinary school, so we're readying that for that career pathway.”
She said some students leaving the program do continue into culinary school, while others go straight into the industry or take on apprenticeships.
“They're given a lot of opportunities to be successful in the real world, because of the experience that they're getting here,” she said.
— Contact education reporter Karly Graham at kgraham@petoskeynews.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KarlyGrahamJRN.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Gaylord High School to send 6 students to statewide culinary competition
