Many different smells enter the hallway during 5th hour at Potosi High School. Those smells can vary from being pleasantly aromatic to being sometimes disgusting. Food science is a class that almost every student at Potosi wants to take. The class is so much different from almost all of the other classes for students, and it is different for agricultural teacher Tracy Brunton to teach. Mrs. Brunton says, “Food Science is different from all of my other classes because there are a lot of different labs.” There are many different preparations that Mrs.Brunton has to make for food science.
Food Science is a class that is two semesters long, unlike most of Mrs. Brunton’s other classes. The first semester is more science-based, which is why students can earn a science credit. In the first semester, they learn about the composition of food by doing activities such as drying and dehydration. The second semester is more along the lines of a cooking class. In the second semester, they cook more meals instead of just preparing snack foods. Mrs.Brunton has so much to prepare for when it comes to food science. She says, “Walmart basically knows me by name because I have to go there a lot to get the materials we need for what we are cooking.”
Mrs. Brunton really enjoys teaching Food Science. Since many of her agriculture classes are very similar, she enjoys that Food Science contains more hands-on activities and adds some variety to her days. She also really enjoys teaching Food Science because there are kids who join the class who have never cooked before, and she likes to watch them learn. Mrs.Brunton says, “It is fun to watch the kids who have never really cooked before take recipes home and make them again because they really like them.”
The students in Food Science cook foods from all the main food groups. They learn and take notes on the unit before they get to cook foods from that food group. Some of the main food groups that they learn about are proteins and carbohydrates. The foods that they cook include bread, jerky, candy, pretzel bites, alfredo, Italian bread, omelets, various ethnic foods, and cakes. The cake unit is some people's favorite because they have a cupcake war. Erin Potter, a student who has taken food science already, said that her favorite food to cook was the alfredo, and her least favorite was the drying and dehydration unit when they dehydrated fruit.
We were fortunate enough to be able to upgrade our foods room two summers ago. Mrs. Brunton was able to make most of the decisions on the upgrades that went on in the foods room. She says, “It was nice being able to make a lot of the decisions on the upgrade, and Jamie is so good with designing things that he took into account the things that we didn't have before.” One of the decisions that Mrs. Brunton got to make was the creation of four stations. They had talked about going down to three, but Mrs.Brunton’s classes can range from having eight to ten kids to having 24 kids. She also wanted to have a microwave at every station; before they shared just one small microwave. The last element that she knew she wanted was their own fridge. Before, they never had their own, and they had to use the fridge in the teachers’ lounge.
We are lucky to have Mrs.Brunton. She makes the Food Science classroom special for the students. Food science is a very unique class, which makes the class popular, and it will surely continue to be in the future.