KP Helps Teachers Navigate Online Teaching with Ease; First Month Into COVID-19 Lock-down

During the COVID-19 crisis when the National State of Emergency was declared, KP Education Systems opened their doors and offered free access to their curriculum and learning system.  This made it easy for teachers to teach online with rigor and relevance.  One teacher wrote a heartfelt response to our efforts after using KP for 3 weeks.  Here’s her testimony.

From Mrs. Solger,

I am a third year Culinary Instructor in a rural town in Chipley, Florida.  I was enjoying and loving being in the classroom and in my “kitchens”. I literally almost fell to pieces when they said we wouldn’t be back.  

How was I going to cover the standards that I had left to cover? We literally had nine more weeks of school left. A whole quarter of the year. Then, as I was flipping through posts on FB I found some information on KP Curriculum. I was hesitant because, well you know, the internet.  I continued reading and saw a lot of good reviews, so I filled out the form and within two days my classes were set up. Was I overwhelmed? Yes, I was! KP had everything I needed to finish out the year if I had to. I was able to choose exactly the content areas I needed  and, more importantly, it was ready to go, ready for my kids to get started.  Was I nervous? Yes, I was. I didn’t have the kids in class for me to take them step by step through the process of making an account and signing in and getting started.  They did all that just by following my instructions that I relayed to them through our already existing google classroom account. Thus, our journey with KP began. 

KP has all the components of an effective classroom that engages your students in listening (they can have the text read to them), reading (they can read along while the text is being read), writing (using extended response questions following any activities that are utilized), testing (using summative, formative and diagnostic means),  and a means for you, as the facilitator to follow along their journey accepting or rejecting their responses along the way. 

I am able to adjust activities to meet the current needs of my students. The activities we have come across are hands on and my students are not able to even get out to get the ingredients necessary, so I give them the option to either do the hands on activity or do some kind of research that would lead them to a conclusion of what the hands on activity would have concluded.  For example, if they had to upload a picture of their mise en place for a particular recipe I told them to hand draw what that mise en place would look like.  I have gotten some really good drawings this way. This is just one example. I will have gone through 4 units by the time we are through and have adjusted those units for the students to choose which to do. 

I am currently working on adding some more tests to the units that look more like the ServSafe unit. I feel like the checkpoint tests give a clearer picture (and a grade) of what they are really mastering. I love the ServSafe module.We are driven by the colors. If they get yellow, they must review before they take the checkpoint test. I tell them, and this is where the motivation on their part comes in, that if I am going to pay for them to take a test, I want to be sure they are going to pass it the first time. 

The KP site is easy to maneuver once you get the hang of it. The curriculum is challenging for the students, which is what I was looking for when I set out to find something to “make it through” these uncertain times. I didn’t want “busy” work. I didn’t want “filler”. I wanted something that would continue to build on what I had started the three nine weeks prior to this new way of life. KP is doing that for my program. 

One more thing, because I also have students that don’t have internet it's easy to assign them assignments from my already existing curriculum because KP is that inline with what I was already doing. 

Sandra L. Solger at Chipley High School
Culinary Arts/FCS/Math
ServSafe Certified Instructor/Proctor