What can teachers learn from chefs?

“Most of the time it was the bad students who were shipped to the culinary school. Today things have changed a lot.”

So says four-star Le Bernardin chef Eric Ripert while talking with the president of the Culinary Institute of America on an episode of cooking show Avec Eric. The two men are overlooking the Hudson River at the institute’s Hyde Park campus, reminiscing and talking shop. Ripert continues: 

“Today it’s a prestigious, honorific title to be a chef. I think it’s because of the help of TV and media. It has created a great interest in our industry … [W]hen I was in culinary school, it was very uneven in terms of quality of students. Some students who were there didn’t really want to be chefs. Some students were passionate, some students didn’t know what they were doing there. But when you have such a demand, and when you have a great curriculum, you really create future champions in our industry.”

Few professions have undergone as dramatic a transformation in a 25-year time span as chefs have since the ~1970s. To be sure, there have always been great chefs, as there have always been great teachers. But as Ripert notes, the prestige now tied to the profession, and the depth of talent that brings, is a new phenomenon. How did chefs do it? And could teachers pull off a similar feat? The need is urgent: today only 23% of new teachers come from the top-third of college graduates (McKinsey: Closing the Talent Gap). 

The story of public education’s evolution over the last century is in many ways the story of an ongoing struggle to professionalize teaching. We’ve made progress: teaching is no longer “women’s work”, subject to the low prestige and wages that denigration implies. But now the loudest voices in education have reached an impasse. On one side, union voices assert that teaching already is a profession, if we’d simply stop meddling in classrooms, imposing requirements and evaluations that curtail teachers’ ability to make professional judgments about what and how students should learn. On the other, reformers argue that other professions understand the importance of using standards and assessments as a foundation for identifying, rewarding, and learning from top-performers in a collaborative environment. In the union model, the classroom is the teacher’s domain. In the reform model, the students are the teachers’ domain. Both sides claim to have the answer, so who’s right? Using the culinary industry as a counterpoint would suggest that to a certain extent, both are. The current debate is forcing a false choice. 

On the surface, Ripert’s theory on changes in the culinary industry appears to be relatively simple: media sparked increased demand, which in turn enabled graduate schools to select and train high-quality applicants. When those students went on to perform at a high level, a virtuous cycle went into effect. But if you look more closely at “media” as the genesis of the cycle, you uncover additional layers to the story:

• Practitioners as content producers. Where chefs once executed a standardized repertoire of technique and culinary tradition, today they are expected to build on that foundation in order to create original dishes and a coherent menu/ brand. The rise of celebrity-chef cookbooks and chains—Wolfgang Puck, exhibit A—popularized the idea of chefs having ownership of their content in this way.
• Customers as amateur practitioners and content producers. Eventually, many amateur critics decided to try transforming restaurant favorites into weeknight staples. As customers learned to follow branded recipes, they also learned to appreciate the difficulty of cooking at a professional level. For those that succeed in pulling off that perfect pastry, there are now technology platforms that facilitate sharing the accomplishment. 
• Accountability for performance. Yelp, Urbanspoon—today everyone is a critic, every opinion has an outlet. Chefs who fail to deliver have nowhere to hide, but young talents who strike out on their own no longer have to climb the industry ladder. Accountability and disruption go hand in hand.
• Culture of innovation and diversity. Fusion. Molecular gastronomy. Foraging. I see the same interest in innovation and diversity, if not the same caliber of cooking, when I visit my family in Wisconsin as when I go out for dinner on a Friday night in New York. Cooking shows and other media that showcase a wide range of flavors have accelerated the growth of this culture, which contributes to the profession’s allure and vibrancy. 
• High rewards for high-performers. From judging reality shows to launching branded chains, high-performing chefs bring home the bacon (sorry) in a way that was never before possible. It’s worth noting that this shift has also changed what it takes to be a high-performing chef; being telegenic, for example, is almost as important as executing a mean seared scallop. Of course, at some point along the way it might be fair to stop saying chef and start saying entrepreneur. 

This nuance to the “media as catalyst for professionalism” story suggests a number of implications for teaching.

• First, we should be using technology to better position teachers as content producers. TeachersPayTeachers.com and other sites are a first step toward creating this marketplace, which will only grow as technology supports the dis-aggregation of content into discrete lessons. 
• Second, having a highly engaged audience is critical. In terms of professionalizing teaching, I think this has less to do with student engagement and more to do with community engagement. School choice can serve as an catalyst for this kind of daunting cultural change, but it’s only part of the puzzle. Even now, for every person with a sous vide machine at home, there’s someone like my grandmother who is loyal to her Jell-o molds. But between these extremes, we have all learned to speak the language of “ciabatta”. In other words, change is possible.
• Third, teachers must be accountable for their performance. No way around this one. Chefs live and die by their ability to make money and garner positive reviews; a similar mix of quantitative and qualitative measures should apply to teachers. 
• Fourth, our education system is chock-full of rules and regulations that stymie innovation. They have to go. Seat time requirements, charter school caps, technology restrictions—it’s time to let go of our industrial model and the nostalgia that surrounds it.
• Last but not least, teaching needs pay-for-performance models in conjunction with new career ladders. Teachers are not widgets, and great teachers are not necessarily great administrators. We need to find ways to reward teaching talent without separating teachers from what they do best.

This list, while not exhaustive, is designed as a starting point for shaking up the current debate over how to professionalize teaching. (And I should be clear: this post is about what it takes to professionalize a job, not what it takes to do a job well. Students aren’t recipe ingredients.) The parallel between chefs-as-professionals and teachers-as-professionals isn’t perfect, but it’s instructive. Now more than ever before we need to challenge our thinking, not play to nostalgia. 

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Earlier this month New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood wrote a “critical review” of the open kitchen at Aldea, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan. For me the article epitomized just how far humble cooking has come, from job to profession to (debate-able) art. “I’m not quite of the school that believes chefs are artists. Good food enhances the joy we may take in life, but can it really express a vision of life the way art can?” Isherwood mused. 

I hope that one day soon we can move past the impasse over teaching as a profession and instead raise questions like Isherwood’s about the ability of good teaching and learning to enhance joy. Our kids deserve nothing less.