By Emily Fitzgerald
emily@chronline.com
Napavine Jr./Sr. High School’s new commercial kitchen has passed its inspections and is now ready for students to practice cooking for their teachers and other school staff.
The kitchen started as the high school’s home economics classroom, which the district decided to gut and turn into a commercial kitchen about three years ago as part of an ongoing effort to expand its career and technical education (CTE) programs.
“We have a lot of restaurants in Napavine … So I went to all the managers and said, you know, ‘what do you want students to know?’ And so that’s kind of why we built it how we built it and everything, kind of geared toward training them to go to work,” said Napavine School District CTE Director David Rutherford.
Part of the renovated classroom is still dedicated to home economics classes, while the remainder of the classroom is a fully certified commercial kitchen that’s able to accommodate 20 or so students per class.
The district’s culinary arts program consists of three courses: Culinary Arts 1 and Culinary Arts 2 at the high school level and an intro to culinary arts and nutrition class for eighth graders.
“We just learn how to cook, how to use ingredients, tools and all that,” said culinary arts teacher Dalton Workman.
Culinary Arts 1 students recently learned how to make soups, stocks and sauces, while the Culinary Arts 2 students are running the newly created Tiger Cafe, where staff can purchase lunches prepared by the students.
“They’re learning more of the industrial parts, where it’s kind of like they’re in a restaurant,” Workman said.
The Napavine School District hopes to build the culinary arts program into an entrepreneur program like the school’s shop and greenhouse that can help students raise enough money to compete in high-level SkillsUSA competitions.
“For kids that are going to go to state or regionals, or hopefully nationals, that's their way of earning money to send those students,” Rutherford said.
Other CTE programs at Napavine Jr./Sr. High School include business fundamentals, commercial art, construction, digital photography, environmental science, global business communications, graphic design, healthy living and welding.
U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, paid a visit to Napavine Jr./Sr. High School on Tuesday, April 22, to tour the school and learn about its CTE programs.
During the visit, Gluesenkamp Perez spoke frequently on the importance of CTE and vocational education, highlighting the trades as a valuable way for young Americans to find a career and become economically independent.
“If you are a master mechanic or tradesman, you have power,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “I think shifting and getting back to our roots as a nation as makers, like that are self sufficient again, that's real power. This is power, knowing how to make stuff, to make what you want.”
Read The Chronicle’s article on Gluesenkamp Perez’s visit here.
For more information on Napavine Jr./Sr. High School’s CTE program, visit https://nhs.napavineschools.org/o/nhs/page/napavine-cte.
