Southeastern Regional Vocational High School inspires future chefs

By Claire Coakley

Chef Lisa Maiden stands in front of her students wearing her white chef jacket, ready to teach the proper way to make the perfect sandwich.

Students raise their hands ready answer Chef Maiden’s questions on the proper ingredients for a turkey club.

For students pursuing a career in the culinary arts Southeastern Regional Vocational Technical High School is the place to prepare for a future in food.

Southeastern Regional, a four year high school that serves young men and women from the city of Brockton and surrounding towns, combines academics with vocational and technical studies to prepare them for employment and life after high school.

“The courses that we take at school are intense, challenging, and rewarding all at the same time.” Josh Frank said, a 16 year old culinary arts student.

The culinary arts program is the most popular at the school offering training in baking, cooking, industrialized food service, and dining room functions.

“I would have to say my favorite part of the program is being able to get the hands on experience that a lot of other kids my age aren't offered.” Tequila Stone,17, a culinary student said. “I learned how to sauté and that is really useful because I enjoy doing it at home and showing everyone what I can do. I also learned a lot of useful things like sanitation and different cooking methods.”

Chef Lisa Maiden, one of the instructors at Southeastern Regional said the culinary program preps the students for employment. Academic and technical classes alternate each week to promote the integration of academics and technical education.

“Most students leave here with their high school diploma and their Serv-Safe certificate which is basically management certification which makes them a lot more desirable for employment at restaurants.” Maiden said.

The students usually start class around 8:30 a.m. Class time entails going over different techniques and concepts, such as how to build a sandwich, “mis en place” which is French for “putting in place” and entails having all of your ingredients ready before cooking.

At 10 o’clock, students have “shop”, the hands on experience of working in their school-run restaurant where they get to cook, prepare the food, and run the restaurant.

“Like any other restaurant it has its very busy days where people are running around trying to get everything done and we have our slow days where everyone is doing other things. But having our own restaurant gives students the opportunity to learn the basics of a successful business and develop skills needed for the working world ahead of us.” Stone said.

The cafeteria at Southeastern is not your normal school cafeteria. It is set up as a restaurant and each day student’s are assigned different jobs such as hostess, dishwasher, line cook, and waiters.

The restaurant has a number of small round tables with red and white checkered table cloths, centered with a small vase of flowers ready for hungry customers to sit and eat.

“A typical day for us is to come into shop, get changed, and get right to work. We don't have much time to prepare our meals so we always have to be on top of our game. But the experience we get in the kitchen is my favorite part,” Frank said.

Getting experience, not homework, is stressed. “Honestly we aren't really given homework but if we are it's homework that benefits us and what we’ve learned. For example our instructor might tell us to look up a recipe or come up with our own recipe” Stone said, a 17 year old culinary student.

Maiden said many of the students continue on to culinary school, such as Johnson and Wales University, The Culinary Institute of America, New England Culinary Institute, and Newbury College.

Most students that go on to culinary school from Southeastern already have college credit from the courses they took, saving them money, she said.

“I do plan on going to culinary school. The schools I’m looking into are the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University. From there I plan on deciding where I want to go in the culinary field.” Frank said.