The Difference Between Teaching and Training:
I’ve been tasked with working with several people in the kitchen to give them the skills to do some baking & pastry tasks.
My first inclination was to teach rather than train, and like the proverbial “teaching a pig to dance,” it made me mad, and frustrated the pig.
My “students” were messing up right and left, weren’t able to extrapolate to new situations in the way I had hoped, were frustrated, bordering on angry. I was exasperated because I had explained it all, and they were still hopelessly lost.
A cliche definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
So I needed to change my tactics.
I started contemplating the difference between “teaching” and “training” in an effort to discover a better way to accomplish my mission. .
“Training” is showing someone how to do something. Over and over and over, until they “get” it. You don’t have to explain; in fact, it’s much better if you don’t. Training is about skill.
“Teaching,” on the other hand, is all about explaining. You can teach without ever showing; even the best textbooks don’t really show the whole process. Teaching is about knowledge. You teach when you want to give the teachee the ability to make independent decisions.
It’s very rare that you will ever be able to teach in a kitchen — it’s all about training.
It’s very simple: This is what you need to do, and this is how to do it. No variation, no exception, no discussion. If something comes up that is different from what I have shown you, come and get me.
It sounds hard, yes.
And patronizing.
But the alternative is worse.
The piggy gets VeRy angry.
Case in point: I explained why pecans are put into the shell before the filling goes in, instead of being mixed in with the filling — the pecans will be broken up too much, for one thing. But more importantly, it’s almost impossible to dish out an equal portion of pecans into every pie shell if the pecans are mixed in with the filling.
This was on Monday.
On Tuesday, we were making a different kind of pecan pie, and my trainee put the pecans into the mixer.
Somewhat exasperated, I said, “Why did you do that? We talked about this yesterday! Pecans go in the pie shell!”
The answer was, “Because the instructions said to put the pecans in the mixer.”
“Yes, but the instructions were written for ONE pie. We’re making 20.”
“Oh.”
What I should have done (aside from removing the instructions from Pecan Pie #2) was to show the trainee that pecans go in the pie shell — no variations, no exceptions, no discussion. Anything else is wrong: No esoteric explaination about production versus individual pie making — no discussion of standardization of end product and how best to achieve that — no explaination necessary. It just confuses things.
This is how you do it.
No variations, no exceptions, no discussion.
Occasionally, you’ll get someone who wants to challenge — maybe they had a baking class, or worse, maybe they bake at home.
You’ll think, “Aha! I’ve got a student here.”
Chances are, you’d be wrong.
If they wanted a culinary education, they’d be in culinary school.
You may have to say, “This is the way we do it here — no variation, no exception, no discussion.”
If you want to be nice, you can say, “That’s an interesting idea, but years of experience have shown that this is the most reliable way to get the results we need. This is the way we do it here. . . no variation, no exception, no discussion.”
No variation.
No exception.
No discussion.
Part of being a pastry chef is putting your foot down.
Oooooooooooooooooooo! You’re a Chef!
Most of the time, I’m careful to ditch my chocolate and egg-smeared jacket before I head into the grocery store on the way home.
I have to shop, too.
“No can eat only cookies!”
Sometimes I’m cold, it’s windy, or I’m so tired I just don’t give a rat’s ass, I leave it on.
Most people leave me alone. One lady said “You look tired.” This was Thanksgiving evening. I said, “You’re right.” That was the extent of the conversation, and I was happy for it.
Sometimes I’m not so lucky and I’m asked all sorts of culinary questions. I can go incognito if I don’t have the jacket — nobody seems to recognize the black clogs, the chalkstripe baggy pants, and the white t-shirt, so I can generally fly under their Chef-dar.
I went to culinary school when being a “chef” was just taking off as the Next Big Thing. Now it’s insane bananas sexy. Everybody watches “Iron Chef,” Hell’s Kitchen,” “Top Chef” or (shudder), “Top Chef Just Desserts.” Some people even watch “Chopped,” I suppose.
This town is a food town, full of Slow Food people, locavores, sustainable farms, upscale “Farmer’s Market” grocery stores, farmer’s markets, Jersey cow farms, and CSAs; it’s full of chef groupies. But even people who’ve read Kitchen Confidential and The Making of a Chef, even people who’ve watched Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” even those people don’t “get it.”
Cooking, being a chef, is physically and mentally grueling work.
It’s hot, dirty, dangerous, and stressful.
Night after night, day after day, over and over.
A friend of mine at work was standing at the tilting braising pan one day, stirring food with a large paddle. He laughed and said that when people at his church find out what he does for a living, they’re all over him like he’s a rock star. . . . and then he said “when you’re making food with a shovel, it’s not sexy.”
When you’re making food with a shovel, it’s not sexy.
Nigella Lawson, licking something off of a spoon, now that’s sexy.
Stirring 150 pounds of chili with a shovel = not sexy.
Most of what we do = not sexy.
It’s not sexy, people.
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