Knox — Kids benefit by leaving room for extra course

Jack Knox is a former Kamloops newspaper journalist who now writes for the Victoria Times Colonist.

COLUMN — Enjoyed a three-course lunch this week.

The food — butternut squash soup and baguette, quiche and salad, cake for dessert — was good, but the service was superb.

The maitre d’ knew where to seat me without looking at his list. The moment my water glass was empty, the server — crisp white shirt, well-knotted tie — magically appeared with a refill. The plates arrived and were cleared with the kind of down-to-the-second efficiency that would make a Victoria parking warden green with envy. Forty-five minutes, in and out.

I briefly considered lingering over a glass of wine, but figured the cellar at Central Middle School might not be up to snuff. Also, they needed to change the dining area back into a classroom.

Welcome to Gabe Levesque’s pop-up course on how to be a restaurant server.

Levesque teaches Grade 7 French immersion at Central but, like other staff at the Fort Street school, also leads what are known as enrichment classes — limited-duration, once-a-week courses on everything from entrepreneurship to playing the bagpipes. Three times a year, students have the chance to sign up for a nine-week course on whatever strikes their fancy. Think of adult-education programs, except for kids. Brain candy.

This fall, Levesque, who worked for a caterer while in university, offered students a “mystery” course on what turned out to be the art of being a server.

Each Wednesday, 18 Central students spent 84 minutes learning a little about what it would take to work in a good restaurant. One day, they walked downtown to Outlooks Menswear, where owner Dale Olsen taught them how to tie a bow tie. On another, they marched over to the Fairmont Empress, where they learned how to set a table, carry a tray. They took trays home for a couple of weeks, practised on their families.

The course culminated in 50 or so students and staff, chosen at random, being served that three-course meal, made from $140 in groceries donated by the Fairfield Thrifty Foods. The sharply dressed servers took their job as seriously as the pros in the Bengal Lounge. Levesque, who had spent the previous weekend and evenings prepping the food, got to wash the dishes (including those lent by the Empress) after the meal.

If that seems like a lot of effort for a non-core subject, well, those non-core subjects are important at Grade 6-8 schools like Central. “A big piece of the middle school experience is exposure to opportunity,” says principal Topher Macintosh. Chess, orienteering, circus arts, whatever, they fire the imagination, introduce new role models, new perspectives. All those boys flocking to Kelly Nyhan’s class on the evolution of aviation combat may not realize they’re studying history.

Keeps them engaged, too. Absentee rates drop on Wednesdays. Enrichment courses have fewer classroom-management issues, teacher-speak for dealing with kids who are unhappy to be there.

Sometimes teachers draw on their own backgrounds, sometimes they tap into the skills of downtown neighbours. “Any time you can incorporate the community in it, the kids get more out of it,” said Levesque, whose previous enrichment programs have ranged from cycling to Japanese. Teachers get creative in sourcing the materials to make the courses happen. Central’s Amy Collins is grateful to the Women In Need co-op, which donates unsold wool and socks to a course where students learn how to upcycle them into purses, fingerless gloves, sock monkeys and whatnot.

Again, this isn’t at the core of what they do at Central and other middle schools. It’s a once-a-week add-on, some jam on the bread to make it go down easier.

But after a strike that dragged on for months, highlighting what’s wrong with the education system, it was good to get a ground-level view of what’s right, teachers stretching out to make the school experience better for their students, members of the community pitching in because they care about the kids, too. It leaves a good taste in your mouth.

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