Amanda Voorman
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“Student Chefs: Connecting Cultures through Cuisine”, Voorman’s winning program idea, involves incorporating cultural food research and preparation into the world language curriculum. In addition to students reading articles and watching movies to learn about cultural customs, celebrations and cuisine, they will now be able to fully experience cultural cuisine by researching recipes and making the dishes themselves. In a fully stocked kitchen, students will prepare and present their culturally relevant dishes to others via their own cooking show. They will create an in-language ingredient, utensils and measurement list and use a recipe written in the target language. Students, once they finish their research and outline, will use camcorders and headsets to record themselves at home preparing their dish from start to finish and then record commentary in the target language to fit the steps in the video. They will then present their cooking show to the class and bring the dish in to share. Voorman, who resides in Toledo, hopes the program also helps students understand the nutritional value of food.