Deliberate Practice

Another quarter has begun and i have a new crop of inexperienced but eager culinary students. As usual i enter the quarter contemplating what i can do to improve the delivery of my class content, what i can do to make an already excellent course even better. I find myself remembering a number of topics from the Performance Management class. Particularly those pertaining to deliberate practice. If these techniques work in business then they could also be applied in the classroom.

The framework for deliberate practice is as follows.
a. approach performance with the goal of getting better.
b. while you are performing keep your mind engaged in the activity. Notice what is
happening,why it is happening, and why your doing the activity.
C. Seek feedback after the activity.
d. Visualize, build mental models of the activity. This is essentially practice in
your mind.
e. repeat the process.

Deliberate practice will be especially helpful when students are engaged in activities such as performing classical knife skills. In the beginning students are excited to learn and perform these new and sometimes difficult techniques. However, as time passes they become bored doing the same things over and over. They rush through the activity and fail to continually improve. Alternatively, they might become frustrated because they see no improvement at all. In either case, the opportunity to learn and grow is diminished because the activity is now viewed as either mindless busy work or a constant reminder of failure. I am hopeful that if i continually emphasize deliberate practice my students will stay focused in the moment, learn to enjoy the little victories, and not become discouraged when progress comes slower than they would like it to.

Feedback and encouragement are going to be critical to sell deliberate practice to the students. I combine feedback and encouragement deliberately because i don't believe you should ever have one without the other, especially with new students. I like to use the "sandwich method" during a critique. That is, layer a criticism between two positive comments about their performance. For instance, i might say "I have noticed that your working much faster and neater than last week. However, your julienne cuts are a little uneven. Keep working on those and make sure your holding your knife the way i showed you. By the way, i also noticed that you took it upon yourself to strain the deep fryer. Nice work, I know its a dirty job but that's the kind of professionalism i want from all my students!"

Another technique that i have used for many years, not realizing that it was termed deliberate practice is teaching the students to "communicate with the food". That is listen to what the food is telling you through your senses (sight, sound, smell, touch,and taste)and your previous experiences. Once you have a basic foundation in cooking, the food will tell you all that you need to know about it. Talking to the food might sound a little odd, and i have even met parents of students that laugh and ask if I'm the peculiar chef that converses with the food. The only thing i can say is that Doctor Doolittle spoke to the animals and i speak to food. He had his eccentricities and i have mine. I am the Food Whisperer!