Alchin, the MMS Exploratory teacher, Erin Sorellino, and myself came together to test out a new version of Young Chefs: Young Chefs 3. Once the outline of the class was established, 10 young chefs signed up for Young Chefs 3 ready to take their culinary skills to the next level with a focus on: Large-Scale Food Production: For foodservice professionals, producing large amounts of food for people is common, but for middle school students, they most likely have never produced high volumes of food. One of the more intense activities we asked the Young Chefs to participate in was preparing a full dinner for both their families as well as other students’ families during the middle school’s Family Night of Serving. This meal included a garden salad with the option of two different scratch-made salad dressings, penne pasta with scratch-made marinara, semi- scratch chicken parmesan, and scratch-made chocolate brownies. During another activity, the Young Chefs prepared over 300 “Kitchen Sink Cookies” from scratch for all staff during institute day. When the students heard the amount of food they would be preparing for both of these activities, their eyes immediately got wide with both excitement and intimidation. The Young Chefs learned how to read standardized recipes as well as time management when producing high volumes of food; this experience gave the students the confidence to be in a commercial kitchen as well as a new-found respect for the FNS Team that feeds them multiple times a day. Serving Others: Although preparing food can often be seen as the most important part of food production, serving others the food that is prepared is a vital skill for students to learn. During the Family Night of Serving, students not only prepared all of the food for their families, they had to actually serve it to them off the MMS cafeteria serving line. Before families came in, our team
Superintendent Lucilla Dávila brought students together by sharing her Puerto Rican heritage through a hands-on Arroz con Pollo cooking lesson, even preparing a Halal version to ensure every Young Chef could participate and enjoy the meal.
A lthough school nutrition programs connect with students every single day through their daily meal programs, there is a vast opportunity to create connection and engagement through teaching students proper cooking skills. Not only are these skills necessary for students to learn as they grow into adulthood, but working with food is something many students genuinely want to participate in. At Marquardt School District 15 (MSD15), the Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) Department, teaching staff, and administrators have collaborated for over 10 years to bring this opportunity of connection to fruition through the Young Chefs Club at Marquardt Middle School (MMS). The Young Chefs Club first began with the former Director of Food and Nutrition Services and a middle school teacher who had a strong passion for cooking. The goal of the club was to teach basic cooking skills to students that they could utilize at home, further
promoting healthy nutrition that was already established within the MSD15 nutrition programs. Since its inception, the club has evolved in many different ways, including new leadership over the club while keeping the roots of the Young Chefs at the forefront of its goals. For the past several years, Young Chefs has been broken down into two types of classes: Young Chefs 1 and Young Chefs 2. Young Chefs 1 focuses on very basic cooking skills such as making trail mix to learn measurements as well as preparing turkey bacon lettuce wraps for easy recipe following. Young Chefs 2 focuses on intermediate cooking skills such as creating a roux for homemade mac and cheese, baking brownies with different fat sources, and preparing pico de gallo for knife skills practice. These two classes have allowed students to build upon their skills slowly, so their overall confidence level in the kitchen remains steady. For the 2025-2026 school year, the FNS Assistant Director, Maribel
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