![]() Meanwhile, suddenly unemployed students didn’t have money to buy food, making it impossible to complete the assignments.Īs a stopgap, the program began assembling food kits for students to pick up to prepare assigned meals at home. “Dairy, eggs, those kinds of things were just gone, you couldn’t get it,” Davidson said, because of chronic shortages at stores. ![]() Students also struggled to purchase basic groceries in the early months of the pandemic. ![]() “Culinary arts is one of the few arts that actually requires all five senses,” said Squire Davidson, manager of the program at Diablo Valley College. Students submitted videos of themselves baking or cooking products at home, but instructors couldn’t evaluate the performance on taste. ![]() When COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, forced the culinary arts program at Diablo Valley College online, student learning was limited. From selling meals to cooking for a food pantry Student job losses, discomfort with online learning and non-existent savings are some theories for the decline. Based on a partial analysis, total enrollment for the system is down 10% to 15%, said system chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley at a board meeting in November. Weber said more career technical programs have begun running modified in-person classes, but data on enrollment won’t be available until early in 2021. Others acquired expensive air filtration devices.Īs a result, costs for career programs have increased during the pandemic.īecause classes have to contain a fraction of the students they normally would, colleges would need to hire additional faculty, but that requires more money. Some also purchased new interactive software to mimic some in-person learning. Hands-on classes have many issues to solve to make in-person learning safe.Ĭolleges spent a lot of staff time planning traffic flows for students, reducing class sizes and changing course schedules. Now more than eight months into the coronavirus pandemic, this is how different vocational programs at California’s community colleges have adapted to their circumstances. “Our programs require a lot of hands-on, in-person instruction,” a tall order during a pandemic, especially when nearly all counties sit in the state’s most restrictive state category of in-person activity – the purple tier. It’s definitely not an ideal situation for CTE,” said Sheneui Weber, vice chancellor of workforce and economic development at California Community Colleges. “I think it’s going as best as we can manage under the circumstances. It’s a pattern other career technical programs can relate to: shut down for the spring and move what’s possible online, then spend the summer planning for a partial return to in-person learning, often with fewer students. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMattersĭiablo’s culinary program eventually brought its students back to the classroom, but the process was long. Students bustle around the classroom in an advanced culinary class as they prepare thanksgiving dinners to be frozen and distributed by the campus food pantry at Diablo Valley College on Nov. More than 75,000 California Community College students in the prior school year earned a degree, certificate or completed an apprenticeship tied to a vocational discipline, according to California Community Colleges data. The three eateries collectively let students in the school’s culinary arts program practice their vocation while earning $250,000 in annual revenue that went back into the program.īut when the pandemic thrust California into a lockdown, the student production of pastas, breads, entrees and breakfast items went dormant at Diablo, instruction moved online and college campuses across the state sat empty.īecause of its hands-on nature, career technical programs like Diablo’s culinary program have struggled to adjust to severe restrictions on in-person learning. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 300 people a day got food and snacks from the student-run bakeshop, cafeteria and restaurant at Diablo Valley College. In a situation where in-person teaching is inherently dangerous, that’s required a lot of innovation on the part of educators. A lot of Career Technical Education programs require a great deal of hands-on experience.
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