This is a guest post from our Catering Director, Marianne Jackson, who was invited to give a presentation to a class of World Academy Third graders in Oakland, CA about her job:
DO YOU MAKE THINGS FANCY AT YOUR JOB?
What’s your job and how did you start? Before you had a job, did you think of how it would look? Can you make it fancy? How would you describe it?
Those were the questions on the survey I filled out for Lucy Schmidt’s 3rd grade class, who teaches at World Academy, an elementary charter school in East Oakland.
The class was doing an “investigation into imagination.” I had so much fun answering their questions that they invited me into their class to give a presentation on what I do for my job.
“You know what I do for a living? I plan parties, how awesome is that?! I get to be really creative and make people happy with the work I do, and I have a ton of fun.”
I divided the class of 18 kids into 4 groups. Chefs, servers, party planners, and drink makers. The chefs wore chef hats and piped whipped cream cheese onto crostini and topped them with dried cherries, apricots, and golden raisins. The servers wore aprons, and passed the appetizers the chefs made on trays and handed out business cards and cocktail napkins. The drink makers mixed two types of Italian sodas, came up with names for their drinks, and decorated them with straws and umbrellas. The party planners decorated desks with tablecloths, garlands, vases, and ostrich feathers and also flipped through cookbooks to find fun recipes. The kids had a blast, and I was thrilled to be part of such a fun day before going back to work for some slightly more serious planning.
xx,
Marianne Jackson
marianne@leftcoastcatering.com
