Students pass on art of pizza tossing

The aroma of cinnamon buns and pizza dough filled the culinary department of Carson High School on Thursday morning, where members of the advanced culinary class hosted second-graders from Bordewich-Bray Elementary school for a lesson in dough-tossing fun.

Nicole Medeiros, second-grade teacher at Bordewich-Bray, suggested bringing her class to the high school to explore career options, and to expose them to something new.

"This is wonderful," she said. "I am very impressed that the high school students are showing them around and teaching them how the appliances work."

Principal Sue Keema supported the idea.

"We wanted to do this because this will be their high school someday, and we wanted to get them familiarized with it," Keema said. "It's also great to have the older students as mentors to the younger students."

The second-graders, adorned in aprons and chef hats donated by John Hurzel of Grandma Hattie's, were paired with high school students. They rushed to their stations to toss dough in the air and pile pepperoni, cheese and olives onto their pizzas.

Culinary student Derek Gates was paired with second-grader Ben Miller.

"Ben is the best pizza maker in the world," Derek said.

Ben conceded he liked to cook, but said making pizzas is too easy for him - he'd rather build houses.

Amongst laughter, yelling, pizza tossing and finger licking were many volunteers, including parents of the second-graders.

"Mrs. Medeiros is a very good teacher," said Lori Streeter, whose daughter Amanda Streeter was tossing pizzas in the air. "She thinks out of the box. She likes to take the class on a lot of field trips. They've gone to the Capitol, museums, parks, all kinds of things. This is great, the kids are having a great time."

Penny Reynolds has been teaching culinary arts at Carson High for 10 years.

Through grants she was able to have the entire kitchen gutted and redesigned. She prides herself in teaching her students how to run a professional and commercial kitchen.

"The kids like to do community service as their finals," she said. "They like to teach what they've learned to someone else."