CULINARY
ARTS
PROGRAM
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Extensive renovations are underway at our new Bowdoin Street location to ensure the continuity of the COMPASS School's successful Culinary Arts Vocational Training Program for special education students. Since installing a restaurant quality kitchen in our Jamiaca Plain school in 1992, COMPASS has offered culinary arts as a vocational education experience. Starting as a hands-on elective, the Vocational Program has developed and expanded every year. For more than 5 years, the COMPASS Café has provided high-level training in the culinary arts. The Café operates as a school-based enterprise – students perform a range of jobs, from cashier to cook to waitress for both the school and the community. The students share in the profits; what they take home each week is determined by their attendance, professionalism, participation and behavior. The program provides students with an experience-based learning model that develops both hard and soft job skills. The main focus of the program is to teach students how to be good employees. Students work through a specialized, integrated curricuum that teaches food safety, food preparation, time management, customer servie and related skills. Students split their day between working in the kitchen and working in the classroom, where they receive instruction in core academic areas. |