Nutrition Staff Uses Summer Break To Improve Skills

Staff Report

The Cherokee County School District’s School Nutrition staff, just like teachers and other school-based staff, use the Summer Break as an opportunity for professional development.

Tonya Cannon, cafeteria manager at Mountain Road Elementary School, recently attended the Georgia Department of Education’s School Nutrition Program Culinary Institute at the University of Georgia in Athens.  Only 40 of the state’s thousands of school food services managers were selected to attend one of the two week-long sessions. 

A major theme of the Institute was “training the trainers,” so that managers like Ms. Cannon could take the lessons learned back to their school systems to share them with peers and their own staff. 

Some of the many topics covered during the training included:

• Re-sizing USDA standardized recipes using the Food Buying Guide;
• Knife skills, volume vs. weight measure, and garnishing ideas;
• Importance of staff following standardized recipes and required serving sizes; and,
• Nutrient Analysis using computer software.