Mayo’s Clinic: Helping Students Take Charge—Using Journals
09 December 2013
Through culinary and reflective journaling, students can become empowered to consider broadly and deeply what they are learning and what they need to do in the future. Your role is simply to encourage them to write.
By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT
Last month, we discussed helping students take charge of their lives by using peer coaching. This month’s column is about using journals, a powerful strategy to assist students in taking charge of their education and their lives.
Journaling
The use of journals has a long and productive history in education. They have been used at all levels of education for a wide range of purposes. They have been used to foster creative-writing skills, research interests, interpersonal skills, intellectual reflection, personal rumination and critical thinking. Inviting—or requiring—students to keep journals in a way to encourage them to write, and writing is one of the most effective a ways to clarify thinking and improve writing, something we want to promote in all our students.
Culinary Journals
Many successful chefs have kept journals of good recipes, ingredient combinations, plate presentations, food events and menu ideas. They become repositories of good ideas to which the chefs can refer when needing to come up with new ideas or new practices. They are also very helpful in reviewing the progress and development of a chef’s thinking and career growth.
Some culinary faculty members encourage students to keep culinary journals while they are in school, as well, so that the students develop the habit of collecting and reviewing information. It builds good habits of note-taking for the future. In some schools, faculty members collect and read the journals, but most just encourage students to keep journals and use other techniques—tests, papers, cooking assignments and observation of performance—for evaluative purposes.
The reason for culinary journals is to build a reservoir of notes about cooking techniques, menu ideas, recipes and recipe variations, and presentation ideas. Some faculty members even encourage students to record information about good meals—including the food, the presentation, and the ambience—that they have enjoyed. Most culinary faculty members, however, do not use reflective journals.
Reflective Journals
Encouraging students to keep reflective journals can be a powerful way to help them build a pattern of thinking about what they have done, what they want to do and what they need to do at attain those goals.
One way to structure the journals is to encourage students to make an entry each week—or more often if appropriate—in which they write down answers to four questions:
- What have I learned this week?
- What could I do better next week?
- What surprised me about my cooking skills this week?
- What did I notice about my professionalism this week?
These questions prompt students to review what they have done and what they can do differently, thereby building a pattern of self-reflection that every good chef has but which might be new for culinary students, many of whom are still coping at learning so many new aspects of cooking.
Another way to structure the journals is to encourage students to write something every day about what they did or thought about that day, from both personal and professional perspectives. While less structured, the daily habit can trigger a pattern of reflection that increases the range and depth of what they think about as they maintain their journals. It also reminds them to reflect on their performance in the class, at a work situation or in studying, all of which can generate personal insights.
Confidentiality
It is important to assure your students that these journals are private and will never be read by you unless a particular student invites you to read that journal. You can mention that you will ask them to review their journals in preparation for an assignment—such as what has been the hardest thing for you to master in this course or which skill you developed most in this course—but they need to be confidential journals. Privacy is essential to ensure that students can make honest comments and consider broadly and deeply what they are learning and what they need to do in the future. Your role is simply to encourage them to reflect and write and not to judge or approve of what they say.
Summary
Thank you for reading this column about using journals as a strategy for students to reflect on their personal and professional lives, a step essential to their taking charge of their lives; next month the column will be about letter-writing as a way to encourage students to take charge of their educations. If you have suggestions for other topics or teaching practices you want to share, send them to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I will include them in future Mayo’s Clinics.
Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT, was most recently a clinical professor at New York University. Principal of Mayo Consulting Services, he continues to teach around the globe, and is a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide. His latest book, Planning an Applied Research Project in Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports (Wiley, 2013), debuted this autumn.