TOL Farris
INTRODUCTION
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Did you know that studying culinary arts and hospitality prepares you for all kinds of careers, as well as a lifetime of good eating?
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Hi, I’m Chef Farris, the Culinary Arts teacher here at Humphreys High School.
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Today, I am going to share with you my personal beliefs about teaching and the learning theories that inform my teaching.
BELIEFS
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I believe every student can master culinary arts skills. I meet my students where they are and work alongside them to help them acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in my course.
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I believe students learn best when they are engaged in meaningful activities. That is why I offer students many opportunities to work on projects that they choose.
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I believe that learning should be connected to real life. That is why I create opportunities for my students to share their work outside the classroom.
LEARNING THEORIES
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My teaching is based on the principles of Sociocultural and Situative learning theories.
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Sociocultural theory stresses the importance of assessing what students know and what they are ready to learn prior to teaching new content. For teaching to be effective, I must meet students at the border between what they can do and what they can do with help, from me as the teacher, or from other more knowledgeable peers.
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Both sociocultural and situative theories support the importance of carefully organizing the information to be imparted; intentionally scaffolding by providing tools for learning; and opportunities for students to observe the activity or skill to be learned. When teaching hands-on skills, students observe me model the skills to be learned through demonstration. Demonstration is followed by imitation with feedback and scaffolded support. This provides opportunities for students to practice and develop the skills they observed.
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Student choice projects enable me to meet students in their own cultural spaces, which is important to sociocultural learning.
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As B.F. Skinner, I would approach your method of teaching by focusing on the observable outcomes and the organization of learning environments—not on unobservable internal states. Your emphasis on student mastery, meaningful activities, real-life connections, and scaffolding aligns with effective ways of shaping behavior. You are essentially arranging the classroom environment to reinforce the kinds of behaviors you want to see—engagement, persistence, and skill acquisition—by providing opportunities for practice, feedback, and reinforcement through both structured tasks and student choice projects.
Where I see room for strengthening your approach is in making reinforcement systematic and explicit, particularly early in the learning process. As I mentioned in my interviews, “a child comes under the control of the instructional materials he’s working with” only after initially being brought under control through clear, contingent reinforcers—like praise, tokens, or privileges. Demonstration, imitation, and repeated practice with scaffolded feedback are critical, and you are right to use them. But it is important not to assume students are automatically reinforced by engaging activities or autonomy; the reinforcers need to be tailored and gradually faded as the student’s skills and intrinsic satisfaction develop.
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1. Advice on building stronger reinforcement systems in your class?
2. My thoughts on student choice and autonomy from a behaviorist perspective?
3. More detail on the role of modeling, feedback, and practice in skill learning?
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I invite you to read and comment on the interviews where B.F. Skinner talks more about his work. One is with Alex Steinberg and the other is with John M. Whiteley. Both can be found in this document: https://writingpartners.net/documents/7839
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To build stronger reinforcement systems in your class, I recommend being very deliberate about the contingencies you set up—establish clear, immediate, and consistent connections between desirable behaviors and reinforcing outcomes. Early in skill development, use tangible and social reinforcers frequently, such as verbal praise, tokens, or extra privileges for demonstrating mastery or positive participation. As I said in my interviews, “You can set up artificial contingencies, which might be just approval, but could be much better than that, to build the behaviors, which then come under the control of the natural contingencies built into books”—that is, start explicit and fade as skills and natural satisfaction grow.
Gradually reduce the frequency and overt nature of reinforcers as students become more competent and begin to experience the natural rewards of the activity itself (like pride in a completed dish or enjoyment of group work). Make sure your reinforcement schedule adapts over time; what works at the beginning (tokens, points, privileges) should be replaced with more naturalistic consequences that maintain motivation. The key is to systematically engineer the environment so positive behaviors are more likely—and to keep checking what actually works for your students, rather than guessing or relying on tradition.
Would you like more examples of classroom reinforcers? Would you like suggestions for fading external rewards? Or do you want advice on dealing with students who don’t respond to existing reinforcers?
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Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like B.F. Skinner.
I invite you to read and comment on the interviews where B.F. Skinner talks more about his work. One is with Alex Steinberg and the other is with John M. Whiteley. Both can be found in this document: https://writingpartners.net/documents/7839
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Certainly. In a classroom, effective reinforcers can include a wide variety of tangible, social, and activity-based outcomes. Tangible reinforcers might be tokens, points, stickers, certificates, or access to special foods or treats during lunch. Privileges, such as extra free time, the opportunity to choose a group, access to play space, or allowing students to select their own project, also serve as strong reinforcers. Social reinforcers—like specific praise (“Excellent knife skills in that demonstration, Maria!”), positive notes home, or public recognition—can be powerful as well.
What matters most is that the reinforcer is meaningful to the student and delivered promptly after the desired behavior. Sometimes, simply being successful at a task or being trusted with responsibility reinforces further engagement (“merely progress is reinforcing”). Over time, you should try to shift from explicit rewards (like tokens or stickers) to subtler and more natural consequences, such as the pleasure of mastering a skill or the satisfaction that comes from serving others a well-prepared meal.
Would you like even more examples of potential reinforcers, strategies for transitioning to natural consequences, or tips for recognizing when to change reinforcers?
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Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like B.F. Skinner.
I invite you to read and comment on the interviews where B.F. Skinner talks more about his work. One is with Alex Steinberg and the other is with John M. Whiteley. Both can be found in this document: https://writingpartners.net/documents/7839
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