When I started high school, I had long hair, a black leather jacket and a bad attitude. Working part-time in a professional kitchen helped turn the latter around.
I wanted cooking to be my career and to achieve that I had to be more disciplined, exacting and passionate. These are the behaviours being instilled in Peggy Watson's culinary students at Stelly's Secondary School.
"We have a fully functioning commercial kitchen and feed students and teachers (breakfast and lunch)," Watson said.
They make things from scratch, such as macaroni and cheese, chicken in black bean sauce, lamb shish kebab and apple strawberry crisp.
Her students, in grades 10 to 12, are enrolled in a course called cafeteria training. In it, Watson teaches the skills necessary for employment in the food-service industry, including punctuality, teamwork and working to a deadline as well as cooking techniques. Beyond meals for the cafeteria, her students occasionally also prepare more elaborate buffet dinners.
Getting some teenagers focused on their tasks requires a lot of energy, enthusiasm and a love of good food, attributes Watson developed early.
She was born in Calgary. Her father, John, was in the oil industry and her mother, Orma, minded their five kids and cooked up a storm.
"My dad did lots of entertaining. Mom took (evening) cooking classes and learned a lot of fancy cooking," Watson said. "Our family has always been foodies."
That included her, and her interest in food developed further in high school.
"I had a fantastic foods (home economics) teacher," Watson said.
Despite the tasty lessons, she was not as interested in cooking as in other activities.
"I was a total jock. I played two sports -- basketball and field hockey," Watson said.
Success in sports caused her to go to the University of Calgary to earn a bachelor's degree in physical education. She then took a job teaching it at a school in Ucluelet.
"I just found I didn't really enjoy it," Watson said, on the chore of trying to get some uninterested kids mobile.
She decided to pursue her other interest, cooking, signing up for the culinary program at Calgary's Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.
She graduated in 1980 and began working in a kitchen, but not in a restaurant.
"I became pregnant and a stay-at-home mom," Watson said.
She and her husband Tony, who moved to Sidney in 1989, ended up having four children, Alex, Ian, Meghan and Bruce. While raising them she did cook professionally, by doing such things as catering and cake decorating.
In 2000, her culinary ability and education, which also includes a post-bachelor program in home economics, proved the right mix of skills to be hired as a home economics teacher at Stelly's Secondary School. After four years of doing that, she took over the cafeteria training course.
"Some of my colleagues thought I was crazy moving from the home economics foods class to a commercial teaching kitchen," Watson said. "In foods we teach one recipe at a time to 24 students in one 80-minute class. In my cafeteria class we have 16 to 24 recipes going on at one time. It is hectic, fast-paced and I am constantly going from one station to another to teach and advise students."
Despite being continually on the go, Watson said her work is rewarding.
"Every once in a while you have the opportunity to encourage and help a student find their hidden talents in baking or cooking. It is such a joy to watch a student who has not had success in any other subject area find something where they can excel and receive positive affirmation. What a gift for a teacher," Watson said.
Some students take the course just to get an introduction to cooking professionally. Others make it the start of their cooking careers, and 11 have signed on to be cook's apprentices through a partnership that includes the school, Camosun College and B.C.'s Industry Training Authority.
"I've had a lot of kids who have gone on to be really good cooks," Watson said, adding that some have won culinary awards.
She says her students, of course, do make mistakes, but that's part of learning to cook and, unlike TV chef Gordon Ramsay, she gently reminds them of that.
"It's no Hell's Kitchen here," Watson said.
Eric Akis is the author of the best-selling Everyone Can Cook book series. His columns appear in the Life section Wednesday and Sunday.
Who: Peggy Watson
Lives: Sidney
Why she's here: Culinary arts chef instructor at Stelly's Secondary School, Central Saanich; certified teacher and cooking school grad; trainer of future professional cooks; infectious ability to inspire teenagers to cook, cook, cook.
Quote: "Every once in a while you have the opportunity to encourage and help a student find their hidden talents in baking or cooking. It is such a joy to watch a student who has not had success in any other subject area find something where they can excel and receive positive affirmation. What a gift for a teacher."
