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Monday, March 26, 2012

Non-Projected Media in the Classroom

To bring hands-on-learning in the Hotel and Hospitality Program classroom, I use a variety of non-projected media sources to encourage students to learn from. For example, I have a bulletin board that show cases the students career desires through individual student's career focused vision boards that were made from images clipped out of tourism and gourmet food magazines. I have posters in the class that are from Education Manitoba that highlight the 9 essential skills everyone needs to succeed. Because my students are all EAL students, I use the white board to go over ideas and words that we have previously learned. It usually takes a few times of seeing a new word for it to be learned. I like to use the white board to write out our daily agenda. That way the students can read it in case they miss something that I spoke because of a language barrier. I bring in objects for display from the industry to teach the hotel front desk part of the curriculum. For example, we use hotel check-in cards that were given to me by the Holiday Inn Airport West. When I am teaching the dining room service part of the course we go into the school cafeteria and set up the tables with line, cutlery, plates, serviettes, water and wine glasses to learn the proper way to do a place setting. During the beverage service part of the course I have a workshop of the students to attend called "Serving it Safe". This is a mandatory course that all servers must take in order to serve alcohol in Manitoba. I also, take my students on tours of hotels to meet the staff that they will be working with on their student work practicums. Because the students choose one area to focus on during their work practicum, having these tours usually helps solidify where the student decides to focus the rest of their studies. They usually decide to work in the culinary or the hotel front desk. It is beneficial for us to go out and meet the industry professionals for the students to see just who they can identify most with while they are figuring out where they want to spend their 18 week work practicum. There is a management component to the course and I enjoy taking my students on a field trip to the food show. We all receive name tags that state that we are buyers. I want my students to be diligent with striking up conversations with sellers. I have the students bring back media and ads of new products that they were newly introduced to. This helps the students see themselves in that leadership management role when they are announcing the products to their classmates.
Because there is such a large practicum component to this course, I encourage the students learning with practical hands on materials that they will use when they are in the industry working. Having these non-projected media tools assists students in being industry ready.