Food Teacher Professional Portfolio Case study

Madeline Mesias

Introduction

I am a 38yr old mummy to 2 boys who trained as a teacher after a 7yr career as a designer in the fashion industry which involved me travelling too much. I have never looked back and thoroughly enjoy being a D&T teacher; I was initially trained as a textiles teacher with Food being my second subject. However I noticed I started to really enjoy food more and more and found my confidence make huge leaps and bounds since joining the food teachers centre on Facebook – thanks to Julie Boyd. I signed up for the food teachers programme to keep my confidence and creativity thriving, and to be able to prove myself by documenting what I do – great for interview. I wanted to get to the point where I am as confident at teaching food as I was textiles.

Food Teacher Professional Portfolio programme

My Journey on the programme

I heard about the programme via the Food Teachers Centre on Facebook. I completed my audit online via BNF mainly because I am a geek…. And I wanted to see how I compared or to see what I knew and understood. The sign up process was very simple, and I enjoyed completing the audit.I thought it was useful to see what I knew and where I needed to strengthen my knowledge, it really helps to tailor training, especially when there are so many interesting looking courses for Food and Nutrition.

Having the results of the audit also helped me see areas for CPD as regards to things I could do myself. The new science part of the GCSE was a challenge but by identifying areas I felt less confident about I have been able to order the right books from Amazon, team up with teachers to joint plan and use YouTube relevant videos in classes and for my own training.

The webinars are an interesting concept, I have pencilled in the dates of the ones I am interested in being a part of.

When I received my portfolio folder, I started to collate information to help with potential interviews, as I had started to grow in confidence in teaching Food I felt I could venture into interviewing for Food positions. I took my portfolio to 2 interviews and actually got both jobs, in less than 2 weeks.

The resources and chat have been very useful, for example by being made aware of the new Eatwell Guide, in April I was able to use the links suggested to build a strong interview lesson which was very successful. My lesson and interview travelled from one school to another which resulted in me being head hunted by my new school (Happy Teacher  - Now solely a Food Teacher with my own room)

Being part of such a large programme with so much experience really feels like their support is with you in the classroom.

It is easy to reflect on my teaching and get creative ideas, as well as seeing what works well rather than re-inventing the wheel; just tweaking it to improve my teaching ability and the learners experience. I cannot speak highly enough of how much support this group including the Food Teachers Centre has been.

I feel without being part of such a programme and group, that I wouldn’t have had the confidence to realise my potential as Food teacher and would have found the Food and Nutrition GCSE more of a challenge and I certainly wouldn’t have had the confidence to apply for just a Food position, which I now have and will start at a great new school in September.

It’s also great to talk to the other teachers about the programme and share resources, coming from industry to teaching I found some teachers to be quite protective of resources, in the design industry it was always about meetings and sharing and bouncing ideas off each other, I found it difficult and quite lonely as a teacher at first, a bit like running your own business. This programme is what I think design and Food teaching is all about, sharing resources and supporting each other, there isn’t an “arm over their work” attitude its more like “THE KIDS LOVED THIS AND THEY LEARNT LOADS !!!! HERE IT IS – GIVE IT A GO” Thank you !