In the fall of 1993, we embarked on a project that we thought would be the answer to teaching AAI, the vehicle for integration of academics, and the pathway to the ultimate integration of the three main areas of the hospitality industry. We think that our struggle with this project, the inclusion of the AAI into our curriculum, and the integration of academics into the hospitality curriculum will interest you. The road to educational reform is not straight, smooth, or safe. Our destination is forever changing, so we had better enjoy the trip.
The plan was for the teachers and students, with the help of industry, to develop a "gift package" to promote the state of Wisconsin to prospective tourists. The students would research our state to determine what products we grow, raise, and produce. The students would also need to research the travel, tourism, recreational, and entertainment opportunities. The gift package would contain sample products either donated by the industry or produced by our students. The students would also need to create recreational and entertainment possibilities. These gift items would need to be packaged and sent to potential tourists all over the world.
Within this plan, we intended to produce a different "gift package" every school year. Hospitality management students from all grade levels would be involved in different aspects of the "package" during different times each year. The Level I students would do the research of our state, ultimately selecting the products to be included. Level III students would concentrate on developing a brochure to market Milwaukee and the other large cities as cultural and entertainment centers. They would need to research the community for ethnic, historical, and manufacturing of products for the "package" and do the assembly, packaging, and distribution of the product. Level IV would study AAI by being advisors/managers to the other levels. Having experienced the parts of other projects throughout the three previous years, they would be ready to consider and implement AAI with the other students. Because all four levels of students would have specific responsibilities over the course of their four years of high school, they would be involved in all aspects of the project, thus experiencing AAI.
Within this plan, we intended to integrate with the academic curriculum so that the students would be learning the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in this project. The team tentatively planned to incorporate the following skills at the various levels:
Level I
Research--Library, written communication, geographic location, culture, history, science, and math skills, applicable to product selection, distribution, and manufacturing
Level II
Marketing, language development, design, and artistic skills; community interviews, research statistics, and demographics
Level III
Production skills; science and math skills for manufacturing, labor, and technology; finance, planning, health, safety, environment, and government
Level IV
Managerial, personnel, personal, critical thinking, and applications skills; conflict resolution
The timeliness of the academic curriculum would hopefully answer the question "Why do we need to learn this?" Geography, English, mathematics, science, foreign languages, speech, and history needed to be addressed at sometime in the project. We still feel this project is a workable idea. With the cooperation of staff, students, parents, community, and industry, the "gift package" can happen. The journey to making it happen is perhaps more important than actually getting there.
Why the Gift Package Didn't Work
One of the obstacles to implementation of the gift package was time. Not all of the teachers with the same level students had common planning time together. (We had to chuckle the first year of integration when some teachers were scheduled for common planning alone.) Without time to coordinate, we could not develop the ideas to be implemented. Time without students is expensive. Creativity in finding time to collaborate is often stifled by computers that program, administrators who do not understand, and teachers who do not cooperate.
Another major obstacle to the success of this project was the lack of a feeling of ownership of the idea by many of the SWIS staff involved. The idea originated at a workshop attended by only three of the many teachers who needed to be involved. As the number of staff involved in the integration of vocational and academic focus areas increased, the ability to process, coordinate, and implement ideas became more difficult. Teachers did not appreciate others coming up with the focus of their classroom presentations. It was truly a difficult task to cram "our" idea down someone else's throat. Projects and thematic units ideally should be initiated out of the team. If not, the other team members need to be thoroughly informed and allowed to critique and input at all levels of planning, implementation, and evaluation.
As the planning for the project started to take shape, it became apparent that the students were not being empowered enough to feel ownership. Our ideas had taken shape without student input and without a thorough evaluation of student needs. Perhaps it would be a few years before the student could see where the ideas fit into the whole project. The student at South is often not in attendance for all four years. The fact is that many students are not in attendance for five days of a week. This project would need to be broken down into individual units for our transient population, and those units needed to fit into the bigger project for those who were with us from start to finish.
Another obstacle that needed to be removed before the gift package could become a reality was the reorganization of an advisory board. With the continuing changes in the specialties, the advisory boards that had been strong and helpful in the past had deteriorated from lack of attention and focus. These shareholders needed to be supportive of our goals in order to assist with the necessary contacts and support a project of this magnitude would take to succeed. We needed to work on the development of a dynamic group from school, community, family, and industry to assist us.
Because the idea of AAI was overwhelming to most of the staff, it became apparent to those of us who conceived the idea that we needed to do something on a smaller scale first. It was from this sense of being overwhelmed that we developed a downsized project to use as a trial run in the hopes of convincing the team members of the validity of a project as a tool to teach AAI and to integrate academics within an area of the hospitality industry-food service.
How the Original Project Changed: The Cheesecake Project
Cheesecake production was not a new idea. We have sold cheesecakes to the staff the week before Spring break for several years. The students themselves like cheesecake; in Wisconsin, just about everybody likes cheesecake. In the past, the vocational teacher would make up a flyer and stuff the staff mailboxes. The students produced the product in one day; decorated and delivered the next. Any student selling a cheesecake received 50cents in profit in their financial account to be spent at school. It was fun, it was successful as a fundraiser, and it taught the students how to make cheesecake. Although the gift package would be more comprehensive and global in nature, this cheesecake project was still a vehicle to teach AAI.
This year, during the opening comments to introduce the unit, we said, "This unit is not about learning how to make a cheesecake. This unit is about how to take a skill you learn and make an industry out of it." The cheesecake project was still teacher-driven, but now it was driven by all the teachers in the team. As a ninth-grade project, and one of their first fund-raising projects, the students lacked the awareness about planning such an endeavor. We believed that by our example of idea conception, production, organization, costing, and marketing that the students could begin to learn about AAI.
The team decided to begin by taking the students into our kitchens, in teams of four to five students, to produce the recipe for cheesecake. The recipe made three 8" cheesecakes, one for them to decorate and taste, one for them to use to analyze the appearance, and one to use for free samples in the teachers' lounges as a marketing tool. At the same time they tasted their product in Hospitality Management class, they studied descriptive words having to do with sight, smell, and taste in English class. They evaluated their cheesecakes and wrote sentences describing the appearance, aroma, taste, and texture.
The next step in the unit was for students to write announcements to sell the cheesecakes to the staff and students. The English teacher had a great time holding contests and voting on the best two or three. The winning students practiced and delivered the messages over the public address system. If you have ever tried to get a ninth grader to speak into a microphone, you know this is a major accomplishment. The students went on to write about the cheesecakes in flyers that were also voted on, printed, and stuffed in mailboxes. Verbal and written language development was an integral part of the English curriculum.
In order to set a price, the students needed to take apart the recipe ingredients one by one and cost them. There was considerable basic math involved in costing the ingredients. The students could visualize 16 ounce=one pound because they had used both ounce and pound scales during production. We started out with pencil and paper, progressed to calculators, and eventually set up a spreadsheet to adjust any changes that might take place. It was rewarding to me as a teacher when a student compared our product to a product she saw in the grocery store and suggested that we should decorate our cheesecakes with whip cream rosettes. This was a great lesson in researching the best whip cream to use, practicing the use of the pastry bag, and adding the cost to the product. Sometimes the students have the best ideas and the most energy to do them.
We designed the production line next. Since the students had made the recipe in their teams, they were familiar with the process. Now they needed to mass produce a standard product. Again, the teacher's expertise was used, but the students were asked to design the layout for a cheesecake factory as an assignment in class. The day of the production, each student was assigned his or her first or second choice of stations. We compared the differences between the "home style" baking in our teams and the industry-type production line.
Throughout the project, as we dug deeper into the aspects of the project, I was happy to get questions that I could only vaguely answer. We scheduled a speaker from "Suzy's Cheesecakes," a successful local company, to come and speak to us about the expenses involved other than the ingredients, as well as the history of the company, the marketing tactics, and the production aspects of their business. The students had their questions ready--they had been asking them since the first day the unit was introduced. As an evaluation of our project, the students compared their plan with the reality of a real industry--Suzy's Cheesecakes.
Next Year's Cheesecake Project
We all look forward to repeating the project next year. The geography teacher is planning lessons to include information about where the ingredients came from. The health teacher might examine the nutritional value and the health risks involved in the food product. English and math can further develop and fine tune their lessons. We could expand our product and do some comparisons to store-bought products. The use of the computer for every step of the unit will develop students' computer knowledge. When I look back at the success of this project, it is as important that the teachers feel good about it as it is for the students to feel success. Sometimes less is more!
As an assessment and a review tool, the team was anxious to move to a more student-driven project. We immediately began a new project that was brainstormed and selected by the students. This time we had the students analyze their production capabilities (what, where, how, when, for whom, and why) in relationship to each idea that they came up with. The students selected a submarine sandwich, marketed it with posters and announcements, and sold it to the student body before and after school. They costed the sandwich, and the vocational teacher demonstrated how to produce one sandwich. They developed and implemented several different production lines since we produced sandwiches for a week. The students chose to participate in a marketing, finance, or production team for this project. When the production was completed, the students assessed the skills they learned and used during the project and applied them to other areas of their lives. The students shared in decisionmaking about how to dispense their profits, which brought many interesting conversations and discussions about the human development aspect of industry: "Why should he get to spend the profits? He wasn't here." "I did all the work--why don't I get more?" "So and so stuck his fingers in the food!" It was rich material for the discussion of the "work ethic." The project helped teach AAI by practical application instead of by reading it out of a book, seeing a filmstrip, or lecturing. The students felt connected to the real world, and the teachers were rejuvenated. Sometimes less is more!
In this next section, we describe some important ideas that we realized, in hindsight, impeded our efforts. By discussing such factors as community, industry, school, faculty, and administrative support, we discovered why we needed to start out with a much smaller project.