Saturday morning at 8:30 I arrived for a “Servsafe” Food Safety course. If our school is going to operate a food truck (or a mobile educational vehicle) someone ought to have the appropriate certification. Apart from making sure that people don’t get sick, it’s a legal requirement for the city of Philadelphia. <\/p>\n
It was a great experience. Some thoughts, in no order: <\/p>\n
1. Being in a class with an instructor who knows the material, knows the purpose of the material, is professional (no late starts, no extended breaks, keeps to an agenda) helped make the eight hour day fly by. It’s trite and obvious, but being with a teacher who genuinely and obviously cares deeply about the material makes everyone feel better. <\/p>\n
2. When the entire class is committed, the usual noise about what’s “boring” and “hard” simply does not happen. In this case, everyone needs to pass this test to be legal and avoid harassment by inspectors. There’s some solid information within the text about how to manage a kitchen safely and what foods present the greatest risks. (The class forced me to create a song to remember safe temperatures for various meats, which is also how to stack them in the fridge, roast fish chops, grinds, ducks.)) That being said, it’s mostly about memorizing a few things and hoping that the rest is common sense. <\/p>\n
3. It really is amazing how much information people can learn quickly when they have to. Learn might be the wrong word; pack into their head and recall immediately is probably a better description. <\/p>\n
4. Finally, the class, like jury duty or the DMV, was diverse in fun and challenging ways. There was a common cause — getting certified so you could get the license from the city — which brought young and old, male and female, black, white, Asian, Hispanic together. Significant class diversity was evident as well. At point the conversation moved off of the material into topics that are great fun to discuss with people who see the world very differently: what is organic food? What are factory farms? Why do people eat what they eat? It made me think about what’s lost in most American schools that are segregated by class and more often than not by race. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday morning at 8:30 I arrived for a “Servsafe” Food Safety course. If our school is going to operate a food truck (or a mobile educational vehicle) someone ought to have the appropriate certification. Apart from making sure that people don’t get sick, it’s a legal requirement for the city of Philadelphia. It was a … Continue reading Learning<\/span>