At a Glance
The Culinary Arts program at Lehigh Career & Technical Institute (LCTI) created a Foodservice Equipment Orientation and Proficiency Log to document student sign-offs for each piece of equipment in the lab.
Description
Safety is of the utmost importance in every lab at LCTI. With the amount of equipment in the culinary lab, it can be difficult for instructors to keep track of which student has been trained on which piece of equipment. To address this challenge, the Culinary Arts instructors created The Foodservice Equipment Orientation and Proficiency Log and implemented it for the 2018-2019 school year. Students receive their own individual log.
The log tracks two key pieces of information in one central location. One, it documents all pieces of equipment for sign-offs. Two, it includes an evaluation component for each piece of equipment to document whether students have gone through the orientation on it and whether they have demonstrated proficiency using it. The Orientation and Proficiency Log system requires students to synthesize their learning for each piece of equipment before they can check it out.
The practice of signing off each student on a piece of equipment is time consuming but necessary. Therefore, the Orientation and Proficiency Log is being spread over the entire year of the Level 1 curriculum except for a few pieces of equipment that may be specific to higher level curriculum. As students need to use a piece of equipment, the training and sign off takes place for that piece of equipment.
For other Culinary Arts programs interested in developing a similar system, the LCTI instructors recommend that they be thorough in their list of equipment pieces that require a sign off. In doing so, they will be prepared for the sign offs when they get to the units that use those pieces of equipment. Also, programs should have the logs printed out ahead of time, so they are ready to go on the first day of instruction.
LCTI plans to continue using The Foodservice Equipment Orientation and Proficiency Log. As more equipment becomes available, the instructors will update the sign off sheet.
Impact
The instructors find the Orientation and Proficiency Log beneficial because it requires students to demonstrate their knowledge in writing before they are permitted to do their performance sign-off.
The log also transfers from year to year which is helpful in a multi-teacher lab.
Contact
Lehigh Career & Technical Institute
http://www.lcti.org/
Kelly Cahoon, Instructional Coach
cahoonk@lcti.org
Twitter: @CahoonIC
Brock Cahoon, Culinary Arts Instructor
cahoonb@lcti.org