What It Takes To Be an Apprentice

By John Kinsella, CMC, CCE, WGMC, AAC

As I write, my college program has just finished its reaccreditation visit from the Accrediting Commission's evaluators. On the exit interview, we were told that we were in compliance in all the areas reviewed. In other words, we had a perfect score.

To get to such a place of excellence takes teamwork, a willingness to accept criticism, and an ability to listen to employers and, most of all, students. Instructors at our college go through a kind of apprenticeship. When a chef applies to become an adjunct instructor, he or she must shadow a fulltime faculty member, who is usually the lead instructor of the courses that the new instructor is going to teach. In the second term, the new instructor is mentored by a lead instructor to ensure that the quality of education continues. Another requirement is that the instructor must be certified within the first year of service. Again, this is a commitment to excellence and standardization that is so essential to any program that involves students.

We are seeing today the spiraling cost of education affecting a lot of culinary students who cannot afford to go to private or even some state schools. As educational dollars diminish, we will see more and more students coming out of vocational programs and going straight to work with limited skills. We've seen the articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post about the high cost of culinary education in this country and the low salaries that these graduates earn after graduation. So, what does an apprenticeship program offer as an alternative to a two-year college degree?

The first thing that comes to mind about my own apprenticeship is that I had to be dedicated to the learning process. My chef, or as I call him, my second father, continually coached and nurtured me. Daily, he would meet with the apprentices and question them on recipe formulas and cooking methods. We were required to work every corner of the kitchen, starting in the vegetable corner, where we learned knife skills, tourner, and many other basic skills, including how to cook vegetables. We learned that any vegetable that grew above the ground went into boiling salted water; any vegetable that grew below the ground (with the exception of new potatoes and baby carrots) was placed in cold salted water, brought to a boil and cooked until just done.

Apprenticeship has two people involved, one a constant learner and one a constant teacher. As a chef, I've graduated more than 180 apprentices over the course of my career. Every one of them is successful and has a fruitful career. Ferdinand Metz, CMC, AAC, gave a dynamic presentation on apprenticeship at our 2007 regional conferences and national convention, and it makes good sense for us to reinvigorate the apprenticeship program within the American Culinary Federation.

I understand that some of our graduates are continuing to work for a chef for another three years to ensure that their skills progress. Reflecting on my apprenticeship, I spent five years under the tutelage of one of the best chefs who ever put on the uniform. He was caring but tough. He taught me stamina, and gave me a constant will to learn that would ensure I would be a successful chef. And that training has come to fruition, even in the teaching field. When we have highly skilled chef-educators setting standards of excellence for our students, it is important that they become mentors to the new group of teachers (apprentices) to carry on excellence in education.

I have never regretted one moment of my apprenticeship, and the knowledge I have today was because of the constant replication of my skills. And, I would hear that voice in the back of my mind: John, anybody can become a cook, and many will take the shortcut and call themselves chefs, but a true apprentice understands that this is a lifetime of learning. This also is a lifetime of caring for other people, and knowing that the constant practice of your craft will bring perfection.

So, I have charged your ACF regional vice presidents to each have five new apprenticeship programs in their regions by the 2008 national convention. And I have asked the education department at the national office to seek grant funds for Workforce Development programs to enable us to support these new apprenticeship programs. It is important that every chapter looks into the possibility of starting an apprenticeship program. This coming year, I intend to visit our successful programs and also reach out to programs that were terminated and encourage them to reopen, including one at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., which was, for many years, one of the finest apprenticeship programs in the United States.

Finally, everybody is looking for highly skilled, qualified staff. Our schools cannot be the only vehicles providing our burgeoning industry with these employees; it has to be a mix of both college education and apprenticeship. And if we really want to see the next generation of chefs becoming successful, as we are, this is the only course we can pursue. So let's get to work and reinvigorate our apprenticeship program, and make it the best chefs' apprenticeship program in the world today.