to expect a teacher to actually teach and HELP, not just shout and then tell off when something goes wrong!!

[psychomum5]

I apologise in advance here, I am angry and therefore ranting, and so may not sound quite sane in the following......and if I offend any teacher it is not teachers as a proffession I have issue with, it is one teacher, on one day, and two daughters upset.....!!!!

cooking

DD1 is doing GSCE catering (she will never be a chef, we know this, but it was the only option that fitted in with her dance and drame that she is doing, but never-the-less she is willing to trying to learn....she will still need to know how to cook as a life skill......I digress....).....she is finding things hard. today, after being away from school for 5 wks (before and after xmas) because of knee injury, she has had her first lesson with cake baking. the previous lesson the teacher showed the class what to do......DD1 missed this thru her absence. still, DD1 went to see the teacher, asked for and was given the topic (baking two cakes, one of which was to have a cream filling, other of choice), and proceeded to sort out what she was baking. One cake was choc/cream swiss roll, the other was marsys infamous LDC.

sadly, all has gone wrong.....DD1 was having issue with doing two cakes in the time allowed (two double lessons, so 1.5hrs), and also had issues with the cooking time of the LDC. she asked for help, was shouted at for not being prepared and for not paying attention in the previous lesson, when she replied saying that she had missed the lesson, was shouted at for being rude (she may have been I do grant....she is 14, she has attitiude, I am not cross about this).....what I am cross about is that the teacher pulled the cake out of the oven before it was ready, and told DD1 that it was pointless continueing and told to just carry on with the swiss roll.

now, not being funny, but we payed for the ingredients for this cake, who is this teacher to effectivly ruin a cake because my DD was having difficulty, surely she should have gone thru what had happened and explained to her how to continue so she can finish the cake,.....in other words, TEACH my DD1 to do, not give up on her.

DD2, same teacher, next double lesson.

had been told that she is to make a pasta dish that uses chicken, and with pasta shapes not spaghetti.....ok, she chose chicken pasta salad.

I went thru everything with her last night, found the recipe on here, and told her the planning and timing etc.

she got a bit muddled with the chicken......she wanted to cook the chicken from raw in school (DD2 coulc make a chef, she is actually a good little cook), so asked the teacher for help grilling the chicken.

the teacher told her that grilling chicken leads to food poisoning, she is to bake it or fry it.

now, DD2 has helped me grill before, she knows it is safe, what she was confused with was the grill at school more than how (IYGWIM), as all ovens are different.

anyway.............she then did what she was told, and then lost points for it as she didn;t follow the menu plan.......

argh.

this I know is about one teacher, and two problems with two girls, but it is both on one day, they are both upset, and I feel that they haven;t actually learnt what to do and how, but they have learnt that this teacher is unfair!

am off for dancing runs now.....will be back for my flack later

so what is food tech then???

I would be interested to learn this, as then I can help my DDs properly.

Cookery and sewing teachers are always insane, and not normally in a good way. This woman sounds like she has the teaching skills of a dead wombat, and will perhaps leave at the end of the year, if you're lucky. The teacher in charge of cookery club at Tiny Clanger's school is also something to do with their Healthy Schools remit, which means that the children never really cook anything apart from pasta salad.

OP, if your DD2 is seriously interested in catering as a career, catering college at 16 is the way to go. I don't think they take much notice of school food tech qualifications.

clanger, thankyou for that advice.

I am not sure where she is headed right now TBH, but she does enjoy cooking, and can do it well (except the clearing up part), so it may be worthy of thought

SmallClanger is on the button: all cookery/food tech teachers are insane or cruel, it's a job requirement. It comes from inhaling too much wholemeal flour.

is it in the training then??

or do they put them into a room with said flour halfway thru, just before they do the CV??

Not sure Pyscho, but sure the TES advertise for cookery teachers as "enthusadistic and committed [by at least two psychiatrists]"

My friend was a health inspector and then worked for M&S he seemed to be their delmonte man really, made sure the food production was up to standard at factories. Apparently there is a real shortage of food technologists in the UK and people will always need food! I think more science than cooking iykwim.

lol (and really, I am laughing at that sentence!)

LOL thats great heated

wonderstuff......so if food tech is about the science of food too, they really are not learning anything adiquate(sp?)!!

I personally think we need to go back to teaching good old fashioned home economics, goodness knows there are a lot of people who leave home with no idea of how to run a house. Cooking on a budget, ironing a shirt, its important stuff, we only seem to teach lifeskills to a few kids who we can't think of anything better to do with once we've decided to take them out of more academic subjects. We do currently have an excellent food tech teacher in our school, hes an ex chef, an exception to prove the rule, but he is teaching a subject which is closer to catering than food technology.

My memories of my cookery teacher are similar to people here, she used to shout at us if we didn't do things the way she wanted, but made no attempt to teach. The idea that we are teaching the kids food tech is stupid. Just done that way because it is a practical subject and has to fit in with the other practical subjects in technology.