Successes and Challenges

In their most recent journal entries, students were asked to reflect on some of the challenges and successes they have experienced throughout the school year in Growing Leaders. Naomi, Annabelle, and Sarai share their stories below.

In Growing Leaders this year I learned a lot about customer service, and about how businesses work in general. I also met a lot of new people, which was awesome, and I think that counts as a success.  I found it challenging to determine our profit after selling a meal because it actually took pretty long. I think it’s surprising that we can usually guess how many meals or add-ons we will end up selling, and have time to finish making them, but we always are making enough and not selling too many. I think sometimes it can be challenging to get everything done in time, but because of that I learned more about teamwork and how if everyone helps out everything will be done. I also learned knife skills, which are really useful to know, and I got a lot better at preparing meals.

-Naomi, 8th grade

One success I’ve had this year was developing my team working and leading skills more. Since it’s my second year, I’ve developed more skills especially as an IWE. It has been really fun and helpful for my future jobs. One challenging thing about growing leaders is that sometimes things happen unexpectedly but it makes it more fun. For example, when the cakes didn’t work out we had to make new ones quickly, but it makes it more like a real restaurant experience.

-Annabelle, 8th grade IWE (second year student)

One success I’ve had so far this year in Growing Leaders is learning more about the garden and crops. I didn’t know about cover crop very much or what it does, and now I do. I’ve also learned how to correctly turn the soil and what that helps with. One thing that was surprising to me was how hard it was to know how much of each ingredient to have. I learned about recipe tests and knowing what to add or take away from the recipe.  Also, a few times this year we’ve either had too much or too little of an ingredient and had to go back to the store or had a lot of leftovers.

-Sarai, 8th grade