An instructor’s role is to motivate students desire to learn and achieve

By: Chef Robert “Bob” Bressan
M. Ed University of Virginia, VA Teacher Institute Curriculum Development Certificate, Culinary Educator Johnson & Wales University

©2025 Chef William Peterson Foundation

“You don’t go to school to become the best chef in the world right after you graduate. School is always a starting point so what people forget is that you go to school to build a foundation, and you want to build a foundation that’s not going to crumble.” ~ Chef Roy Yamaguchi

Prolog: I have been fortunate in my 55+ year culinary career and enjoyed having Will Peterson as a culinary arts student during my 13-year tenure as the principal culinary arts instructor at Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) in Virginia. Now as a Chef Ambassador for his namesake non-profit foundation, I have the unique opportunity to help shape and mold the next generation of talented young men and women in secondary schools to pursue careers as culinary professionals.

The role of the culinary arts instructor in today’s public educational system, in my opinion, putting it mildly is broken. The educational system that many of our students, their parents, and grandparents are encountering daily needs to be revamped. There has been a steady decline in public school math, reading, and social science scores since the 1970’s, which now places our students at the bottom thirty countries of the industrialized world.

Expensive Post Secondary University Education versus Cost Effective Career Technical Education: One Type Education Does Not Fit All Students!

In the United States, the emphasis on who is going to college, and what is our school ranking over what is best for the individual student seems to unduly force educators to push college over CTE (career technical education). This tends to occur whether the student is qualified or not, over the vital need for effective career and technical programs that help to develop the “whole student”.

It is not just about the money spent. Just look at which states get “more for less money spent” on educating their students, than the states that spend “the most money with less than stellar results”. Why is this? Again, in my opinion, what once worked in educating students has been replaced with many untested academic theories of educating and new programs that have replaced the importance of the teacher, and educator, as a role model.

These new programs that are developed for and adhere to the needs of an ever-growing and diverse student population all seem to only emphasize how much money you can make. But not about building on the needed foundational issues that help to develop and mold our students for workforce entry, competition, and excellence in today’s culinary and hospitality industry.

Experienced & Dedicated Culinary Arts Teacher-Educator-Instructor

The need is now greater than ever for the contemporary culinary arts educator to see and recognize the importance and hidden talents that each student possesses. Once assessed, then go above and beyond in developing and laying the proper foundation for each culinary student to succeed in today’s workplace. This is not easy, it takes time, a love of what you are doing, and a vision of where you “the experienced educator” want to take each student.

My goal and desire as an enthusiastic culinary arts educator is to see each student become as proficient as myself, with a desire to always want to learn and grow as a student and as a teacher. In other words, to give back the best to society that one has to offer. Despite artificial intelligence (AI), advanced machinery, and equipment in the culinary industry, you can never take the “I” or the personal involvement out the personalized service needed in the front of the house and professionalism in the back of the house to make the dining experience an overall success.

I have been fortunate to be involved in the food service and hospitality industry for over 55 years from my first job as a dishwasher, then a short order cook, as a young entrepreneur with a start-up on-premises catering service while in graduate school, culminating in being hired as a culinary arts instructor for over 13 years, to currently running a ministry serving meals to the homeless once a week. My other culinary endeavors, including after retirement were a fraternity chef, a chef for emotionally disturbed students, an on-site-tour guide, a full-time substitute for 9th grade culinary arts students. In other words, I have been blessed working with people, especially students and have been successful in working with various educational, social, and diverse age groups with success. Going all in works trust me!

Going All In for the Students Benefit

The reason why I was fortunate to have had and still have role models that gave me their love, understanding, and commitment just to see me succeed started with my loving parents. It extended to coaches, teachers, and professors who saw the potential in me that might not have been evident to other people. Teachers, instructors, educators, and coaches are critically important to successful student outcomes.

We need committed people in our public-school education systems that see the whole student as a unique individual and not just a statistic. It is the foundation and not the building that is the most important part of a structure’s architecture. Likewise, it’s the students’ educational or work skills foundation that is the most important developmental need and not the degree of one’s skill or intelligence. A chef once told me, “Give me a student with a strong work ethic, and I can teach him skills. But give me a student with great skills and a poor work ethic and in the end he/she will not succeed.”

Cultivating the “Whole” Culinary Arts Students’ Work Ethic, Critical Soft Skills and Capabilities

If our culinary students, (the current Generation Z population) are to be successful overall, we must bring our educational leaders and hierarchy to the understanding that successful students are students who have developed and excelled in soft skills first if they are to develop further skills in their area of expertise. Whether you are a great athlete or a great chef your foundational development will be the reason you are more successful than the average athlete or chef. There is such a need among our youth to learn to develop and excel in the many soft skills that are needed and necessary for advancement in their journey while advancing up the ladder of success in their chosen culinary field.

If this is to happen, we need a major change in the mindset of our current professionals, teachers, instructors, and professors to take the challenge of being involved and devoting extra time in helping to be a major role model and influence in each student that we have the privilege and challenge to teach by captivating their hearts. If it wasn’t for the coach who said to me, “you can play major college football” or the teacher who said to me “you can make it through the University of Virginia” despite a dean telling me that “I was out of my league”, I would have never succeeded.

Critical Culinary Student Soft Skills

Encouragement helped me look past the odds of failure and see the rewards of hard work and success. We must approach every student with this kind of encouragement. The best teacher I ever had taught me from the perspective of reaching the whole student by teaching from the heart which he did by inspiring me to be involved with reading, hearing, seeing, and using a hands-on approach to attaining academic and developmental soft skills. There is such a need to instruct our current and future culinary students in the following soft skills that are necessary for success.

• Respect, courtesy and etiquette.
• Being taught about how you should dress for an interview.
• Verbal and body language.
• The importance of being on time, for us old-timers, Vince Lombardy, the great Green Bay Packer football team coach, who said “being on time is being 30 minutes early to the job”.
• Taking pride in your job performance.
• Creativity.
• Teamwork.
• Communication skills (verbal, non-verbal, active listening, and written).
• How you treat your co-workers (fellow students) or your customer.
• Appreciation for the adage “the customer is always right”.
• And the list goes on!

Whether we as adults, or our students know it or not; we are always under the microscope and always being critically evaluated.

Going above and beyond expectations in your job responsibilities begins with your approach to academic and hands-on learning. Leadership, critical thinking, and problem solving, not what the book says, but what is needed to make the task or job a success is lacking in today’s job market. Anyone or anything can be mediocre, but what can you do to make it special needs to be instilled, modeled, and displayed in our current teaching methodologies.

Reset Our Approach to Teaching Culinary Arts Students to Improve Outcomes

A complete resetting of the way we approach instructing and teaching our students is being addressed currently by our lack of results in today’s job market. Constructive criticism is seen as being “dissed” or put down, and what we do in private is more important than what we do while being observed. This discipline is often overlooked but has always been a vital part of my work ethic and what I have worked hard to instill in all my students.

Your character is developed when no one is looking or observing, how you handle money, equipment or foods, the way we treat a person in private, or what we send out on social media tells the world who we are and “if” we can be trusted to do the right thing. The importance of not cheating our employer by constant use of the iPhone or social media must be addressed with our current students whether in the school setting or workplace. There is such a digital addiction now that if it is not addressed and understood by our current Generation Z student population, it will limit productivity in one’s job or educational growth. Out of sight, out of mind with the iPhone is now being implemented in many school districts to address this issue.

If each culinary instructor, chef, or teacher makes it a priority to reach, instruct, and teach each culinary student a step at a time, here a little, there a little, we can make a difference in developing and creating the complete and ideal culinary or hospitality worker that our industry so desperately needs. On our part, it just takes time, vision, perseverance, and a love of what we are doing to develop and see our students succeed in life and in the food service, hospitality, and restaurant industries.

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