A Helpful Serving
By David Rockower

In December, students prepared their resumés and interviewed for positions as servers or cooks. Luckily, each student was able to obtain the position he or she desired.

A fifth-grade class running a restaurant? To some, this may sound like a disaster in the making. However, when a friend of mine passed on a small newspaper clipping describing one such experience, my interest was piqued. The article briefly described how a fifth-grade class collaborated with a downtown diner for several months and then actually ran the restaurant for four hours. I was taken with this idea and quickly shared my interest with our principal. She e-mailed me over the summer suggesting I consider Chatters Café as an option.

Let's get started. Chatters is a small café that is located in our local high school and serves as a culinary arts training ground for high school students. Each week the students practice the various roles of running a restaurant, rotating positions so that each student experiences life as a server, cook, baker, dishwasher, bus boy/girl and house manager. On Thursdays the café is open to faculty and staff. It's during this time that the high school students run the café.

My principal put me in touch with Scott Deshong, a high school guidance counselor who was interested in coordinating the experience. Barb Wible, who runs Chatters Café, was very supportive of the idea as well. Both Mr. Deshong and Mrs. Wible were crucial to the success of the project. We decided that my students would work toward a culminating event at Chatters in May, where they would prepare and serve dinner to their parents. All earnings would go toward a charity of the students' choosing.

As a class, we discussed possible charities, but after the 2004 tsunami disaster occurred, everyone wanted to donate to the Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund. The Boalsburg/Panorama PTA then generously gave us the funds necessary to purchase food for the project.

May I take your order? Our first visit to Chatters took place in November. Mrs. Wible gave my students a tour of the restaurant and answered their questions. Two weeks later, a high school student came to our fifth grade classroom to talk about the service aspect of the industry. My students were shown how to properly set a table, carry food and drinks, take orders and fold napkins. In December, we wrote resumés in class and students applied for positions. Mr. Deshong visited our classroom to talk about interviewing skills and we role-played several interviews. My students then interviewed for their desired positions in January.

After everyone's role was established, we began rehearsing in our classroom. We practiced taking orders, using codes for the items on our student-created menu, serving each other snacks and drinks and using a cash register.

By March, the students were ready to shadow the "big kids." We journeyed to Chatters and my students followed the high school students throughout a lunch hour – servers were matched with servers, cooks with cooks, etc. This generated even more excitement.

No spills. During the last week in April, we ventured to Chatters for our final rehearsal. Half of my class cooked for and served the other half, and then they switched. It was during this time that we were able to work out most of the kinks. I grimaced as trays of food wobbled, but was relieved when they were steadied. The adults smiled when a waiter served a glass of lemonade only half full to ensure that it wouldn't spill. It was far from perfect, but for a bunch of 10- and 11-year-olds, they did a great job.

The project worked its way into our curriculum in several ways. Although the cash register was able to compute tax and totals, I felt it important to teach the students how to find the taxable amount of each bill. After teaching several lessons on calculating percentages, we served snacks to a classroom of fourth graders. My students handwrote the bills and totaled them with the tax. Later, Corey Huber, an intern working in my classroom, designed a math lesson to help students understand how to find actual profit margins after a day's work.

Our district has speaking and listening standards. Taking drink orders, explaining specials, and answering customer questions allowed us to address the following standards:

• Participate in small and large group discussions and presentations
• Present an oral reading
• Listen to others: Ask pertinent questions
• Speak using skills appropriate to formal speech situations

Finally, several Pennsylvania standards for economics were met through our experience. Our classroom discussions and instruction by the culinary arts instructor allowed us to meet these standards:

• Describe goods, services, consumers and producers in a given market transaction
• Describe how prices influence both buyers and sellers
• Describe businesses that provide goods and businesses that provide services
• Identify ways in which a person can improve his or her productivity

Order up! May 11 was the big night. At 4:00 p.m., we met at Chatters and immediately began our set-up. By 6:30, the café was packed with 40 parents, grandparents and siblings. Servers hurried to their tables to introduce themselves and take drink orders. The students worked in teams, as one held the tray while the other served the beverages. Servers filed their customers' orders and returned to their tables to refill drinks. The cooks grilled burgers, checked on the fries and onion rings, made salads and tried to decide if "chic s" meant chicken sandwich or chicken salad.

After dinner and dessert were served, the students realized it was almost over. During clean up, one of my students said, "Mr. Rockower, I've been looking forward to this all year. Now it's almost over and I don't want it to end."

The next day in school we tallied our earnings and found we would be donating $435.00 to the Red Cross Tsunami Relief Fund. Everyone was proud of a job well done. The kids were open and honest about changes that would need to be made "next time." A student asked, "Now that we have some experience, and we know what we have to improve, can we do it again?"

I knew this would be a powerful experience on many levels, but I never imagined how much it would strengthen our classroom community. I'm fairly certain they will never forget this experience; I know that I won't.

David Rockower is currently in his eighth year of teaching in the State College Area School District in Pennsylvania.

November/December, 2006, Vol.37, No.3