Since the culinary kitchen inside Sealy High School opened in October, it has been creating realworld opportunities for students.

The culinary arts project was a Career and Technical Education (CTE) dream that was fulfilled when donors helped Sealy ISD fund a full, commercial-grade kitchen that features all the tools and appliances that would be found in a professional environment.

Family and Consumer Science Teacher and FCCLA Advisor Angela Gutowski said she has already had a host of students apply lessons learned in the classroom to their workplace.

“Several of my kids are working at fast food restaurants where I may have had a handful in the past,” Gutowski said. “They go in and they are hired almost immediately, on the spot, anywhere they go because they already have their food handler’s certification when they leave. That’s the first thing we do at the very beginning of the school year so they can automatically go get a job.”

The lessons have also created real-world opportunities in the college classroom. Senior Mariana Ponce competed in culinary contests and won nearly $7,000 in scholarships to the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Austin.

“There are opportunities that were out there but nobody knows those opportunities are there and when we had the old-style kitchens, we wouldn’t have been able to provide those opportunities,” Gutowski said.

Ponce is set to become a first-generation college student and was similarly appreciative of the hands-on experiences she gained at Sealy High School and the push from her teacher to compete for scholarships.

“I’m the first in my family to ever receive scholarships to go to college and I’ll be the first one to ever go to college. My grandpa is really happy, that’s all he’s ever wanted and now I’ve won scholarships to go to school,” Ponce said. “I have improved since I’ve started and it’s been really fun cooking in here. It makes me feel like I’m already in culinary school getting some experience with how everything works.”

Senior classmate Daniel Medrano represented Sealy High at regional-level FCCLA competitions and has similarly seen improvement around the kitchen.

“I was still around when we had the tiny kitchen,” Medrano said. “It really is beneficial to the side that it helps you get more engaged into a realworld situation. … It’s cool to be more recognizable with the hands-on stuff of all of the state-of-the-art equipment.”

At the end of the day, Gutowski sees countless benefits in concocting real-world experiences in a high school classroom.

“I am a firm believer that every student should have a basic, how-to-be-an-adult class,” Gutowski said. “Even if it’s little things like how to check your tires, your oil, how to make dinner on the fly in thirty minutes because you’re hungry or how to cook in a dorm room, how to do your laundry; they should know all of the life things.”