Alburnett High School cooks up big plans

ALBURNETT - One teacher and her students at Alburnett High School are gearing up for a year of high-end culinary competitions, but with a leg-up over other schools around the state. LaRae Arment, family and consumer science teacher at Alburnett High School, attended a one-week culinary institute this summer put on by ProStart, an organization that hosts culinary competitions across the county and teaches educators about advanced culinary skills. Arment won a nearly $2,000 scholarship for the ProStart Institute in Daytona, Florida.

She said the program was a unique opportunity for a small school like Alburnett, which has 650 students in Kindergarten through 12th grade.

'To me, it was an honor and a privilege to go there because it's not cheap to go and be able to network with those other teachers,” she said. 'It was an awesome opportunity.”

'A lot of the other teachers that I was with, their school district sent them to the training, but a lot of them were like Central Campus where it was more specialized,” she said. 'I was able to connect with other people throughout the U.S. and see how they run their programs in the different areas.”

Arment started the ProStart program in Alburnett last year and the school placed second in the Iowa Central competition.

'I think it shocked a lot of people when we went to the competition and told people we were from Alburnett,” said Christian Magoon, a 17-year old senior who competed last year. 'It really makes our school stand out.”

Only four students can compete on each team, but eleven students are in the Alburnett program right now. Arment said a cook-off halfway through the year will determine the final team.

And Magoon said he hopes to compete for the state title.

'I'm not shooting for the stars to get first, I mean that would be great, but even getting in the top three we would get noticed,” he said. 'We're just such a small town so the recognition is nice and it just draws more people to the school.”

Stephanie Ghertner, director of the Darden Foundation, a national restaurant company that sponsors ProStart and the institute scholarships, said the program's benefits stretch far beyond just cooking skills. In the competition, she said, students work on team building and business and communication skills while preparing and presenting their dishes.

Furthermore, she said the summer institutes serve an essential role in the ProStart program as a whole.

'We can't focus on students in ProStart without giving teachers the skills and training,” Ghertner said. 'It's important for us to build the capacity of teachers by providing them with the skills and expertise.”