May, June, and the Myth of “Winding Down” – By Chef Bill Walker – Culinary Arts Instructor, EPHS

May, June, and the Myth of “Winding Down” – While everyone else is coasting, we’re preheating to 500°

Somewhere around mid-May, a strange seasonal migration begins in schools across the country. Teachers start easing off the gas. Review packets appear. Movies get wheeled in like honored guests. The phrase “just get them through finals” floats through the hallways like background noise nobody asked for.

Meanwhile, in the culinary classroom, we’re in the back like a band that just got handed a surprise encore and then another one because the crowd refuses to leave. There is no winding down. There is only tying on a cleaner apron and sharpening your knife like you’re about to step into something loud, fast, and a little bit glorious.

Let me set the stage.

May strolls in like it brought snacks. What it actually brought is a full production schedule with opinions.

We open with A Taste of Italy, a fundraiser for 135 guests. Not a casual pasta night. This is five giant charcuterie boards arranged like edible architecture. Fresh fruit tarts filled with French pastry cream that demand patience and steady hands. Chicken Parm that walks the tightrope between crispy and saucy. Roasted asparagus that has exactly one job and cannot mess it up. Pasta with Aurora sauce that needs to taste like it came from somewhere sunlit and serious about tomatoes.

This is not cooking.

This is orchestration.

Before the last tart shell has even cooled, we pivot into the JR ROTC Dining Out for 100 guests. The menu reads like comfort food in a dress uniform. Lasagna, pasta, meatballs, garlic knots, desserts. It sounds friendly until you realize every tray has to land hot, consistent, and on time. Precision meets volume, discipline meets marinara.

Then comes Empty Bowls, supporting Good Neighbors. Except in our kitchen, it’s pasta and sauce. Which somehow raises the stakes. Pasta waits for no one. Sauce thickens when you blink. Timing becomes everything. Ladles become instruments. Students start to feel that feeding people is both generosity and logistics wrapped in one very full plate.

And we are just getting warmed up.

We host the East Providence Senior Center in our private dining room. Twenty guests. This is where hospitality becomes real. No shortcuts, no hiding, just eye contact, warmth, and food that says “we’re glad you’re here.”

Then AARP arrives for their annual luncheon. Twenty-four guests, five menu paths, and zero room for autopilot:

• BBQ pulled pork over mac and cheese
• Chicken Francaise with rice pilaf and seasonal vegetables
• Pasta with fresh tomato basil sauce for the vegetarians
• Warm cookie plate
• Chocolate mousse
• Coffee and tea

It is comfort, elegance, and coordination sharing the same table. Students learn quickly that juggling multiple entrées is less about speed and more about rhythm. You miss the beat, you feel it everywhere.

In the middle of all this, we produce 180 branded cookies for the Boys and Girls Club for Legislative Day. I still cannot fully explain Legislative Day, but I can tell you it demands cookies that look like they were cloned in a lab. Same size, same finish, same everything. Consistency becomes a personality trait.

Then a mushroom grower visits, which sends us briefly into a philosophical spiral about fungi. Are they plants? Are they something else entirely? Are they quietly judging our knife cuts? The room gets curious in the best way.

We host a continental breakfast for the Rhode Island Department of Education. Eighteen guests. Light fare, heavy pressure. House made bagels, danish, croissants and muffins. Because simple food has nowhere to hide.

We celebrate our SkillsUSA gold medal winners with brunch. Twelve guests. This one lands differently. You can feel the pride in the room like a low, steady note that keeps everything grounded.

Then come the 300 cookies for the athletic awards banquet. Three hundred. At some point you stop counting and start thinking in sheet pans and oven rotations. Time bends. Sugar becomes a lifestyle.

Desserts for a baby shower. Eighteen guests. Soft edges, clean finishes, tiny details that matter more than you expect.

And then, looming like the final set in a marathon concert, the RI Menu for Success food truck competition.

We are the reigning champions.

No pressure. Just 200 guests and the quiet expectation that you do it again.

Our menu reads like it’s been scribbled in a dream and then dared into existence.

• Smoked brisket with blackberry espresso BBQ glaze over molasses sweet potato maple mash, topped with crispy onion and bacon jam, charred corn and peach relish, and pickled mustard seeds.
• A Belgian waffle with bananas foster.
• A blackberry sparkler.

It sounds like a symphony.

It executes like a high-wire act with no net.

But before any of it begins, before the burners click on and the first tray slides into the oven, there is a ritual.

I’ve been doing it since 1992, back when I worked at UNO’s, and I have never skipped it.

We circle up.

I thank them for showing up. Not just physically, but mentally. I remind them that they are stepping into something bigger than a class period. They are continuing a reputation that has been built over years of events just like this one, layer by layer, plate by plate.

We talk about logistics, ingredients, allergies and dietary needs. The real-world stuff that turns cooking into responsibility.

And then we get to the part they wait for.

I look at them and ask, loud enough to wake up the walls,

“Who rocks?”

They fire back,

“We rock!”

I ask again, louder, with a little more edge, a little more belief,

“WHO ROCKS?”

They come back even louder, like they’ve been saving it,

“WE ROCK!”

And then one more time. No holding back. Full volume, full heart, the kind of moment that sneaks up on you,

“WHO ROCKS?”

And they answer like thunder rolling through a stadium,

“WE ROCK!”

High fives. Fist bumps. Hugs. Chest bumps that would make a caveman proud. A quick explosion of energy before the calm focus settles in.

Then we break.

And we go do the thing.

This is where everything changes.

All year, we build skills. Knife work. Sanitation. Timing. Communication. The steady rhythm of learning how to move in a kitchen without colliding like bumper cars. But May and June feel like turning the dial from rehearsal to performance.

This is where students realize cooking is not just following instructions. It’s anticipation. It’s an adjustment, it’s hearing the tempo of the kitchen and jumping in at the right beat.

There’s always a moment when things get loud. Orders stacking, timers chirping. Someone asking a question while holding a tray that cannot wait.

And then it happens.

A student steps up.

They call times like they’ve been doing it for years. They fix a plate before anyone notices it needs fixing. They steady someone else who is starting to drift.

They become what they have been practicing to be.

It feels a bit like that idea that if you choose not to decide, you still made a choice. In our kitchen, choosing to step up changes everything.

There is chaos, of course.

A tray that wobbles but somehow stays upright like it believes in itself. A sauce that almost breaks but gets pulled back together at the last second. A realization that you are short on portions and need to pivot fast, with math happening in real time and nobody reaching for a calculator.

It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s exhausting. It’s also where the real learning lives.

No worksheet can recreate 100 people waiting for what you are about to send out. No lecture can replace the feeling of lining up components and watching them come together at the exact right moment. No final exam captures the quiet look on a student’s face when they see a finished dish and recognize their own work in it.

While the rest of the school is easing into summer mode, we are in full motion. While others are reviewing, we are producing. While the building starts dreaming about beach days, we are moving like time is a rhythm section that refuses to slow down.

By the time June finally arrives and taps us on the shoulder, we are not strolling to the finish line. We are sliding in, a little flour-dusted, a little sleep-deprived, holding something we made with care and a touch of chaos, hoping it lands just right.

And here is the truth tucked inside all of it.

I would not trade this stretch for anything.

Because somewhere between the charcuterie boards and the 300th cookie, between the brisket and the waffles, something bigger is happening.

Confidence is being built.

Not the loud kind that announces itself.

The quiet kind that says,

“I’ve done hard things before. I know that I can do this.”

The kind that stays.

So while the rest of the school winds down, we show up. Aprons on, towels tucked and ovens humming like they are part of the band.

And when it feels like one more event might be too many, one more tray too heavy, one more guest too much…

We circle up.

We ask the question.

“WHO ROCKS?”

We hear the answer.

“WE ROCK!”

And then we go out and kick the event’s ass.