Teaching portfolio Dirk Noort

Statement of confidentiality:

This statement of confidentiality is meant to be read by colleagues, the chair of my department of the Culinary Arts programs and my instructor of the portfolio course.

The portfolio is an overview of the work that I have done at the college and a look ahead of what I will be working on in the future of my career at the college. It has been amazing so far to be employed by the college and to be working with my colleagues and of course with my students.

The portfolio is also for anyone that is looking at my photography website, I am a passionate photographer and will pursue a career after I retire from the college. I am working on a portfolio over the last 10 years to improve my photography skills and to find interesting projects to do in the photography field.

You are able to follow my blog and access my photography website, please feel free to follow me!

Teaching and learning philosophy

                                           Learning:

I have done a lot of work over my life time as a chef. Starting my career in The Netherlands were I started when I was 15 years old at a technical culinary school. I attended this school for 3 years were I learned how to become a chef, a baker and pastry chef and a server, becoming a server is a career in Europe and when you work in a restaurant in Holland as a waiter you will also become a sommelier and with the right experience you will become a restaurant manager.

I decided to become a chef and after 3 years of the culinary technical school I enrolled in a apprenticeship program that lasted 4 years. I those 4 years you will go to school 1 day a week and work 5 days a week. During that period you will change every year your job, the reason for that is so that you learn from 4 different chefs and establishments to gain the maximum experience to become a experienced Chef De Partie. (translate: independently working chef).

In my early career from the age of 18 to 22 I worked as a apprentice in several restaurants and Hotels in Amsterdam. After I finished my apprenticeship I worked in Michelin star restaurants for 2 years.

I decided to move to Canada in 1989 and I worked in several high end Hotels as a Chef De Partie, a Restaurant Chef and Executive Chef. That gave me the experience and got me the skills I needed to teach and to become a Culinary Professor at George Brown College.

Over the years I learned a lot in my culinary career and worked with great Chefs over that period of time. It was time to change careers however, because I wanted to spent more time with my Family and I found it when I started teaching part-time at the College.

Eventually I started to teach full time and I have done many courses to improve my teaching skills. Teaching is different then working as  a Chef in the kitchen and it takes time to be an experience teacher, you learn every day to become better.

                                         Teaching Philosophy:

I have been teaching at George Brown for 10 years now and what I said before I have learned a lot. My philosophy of teaching is very simple to show respect to your students. When you show them respect the students will respect you too and it makes teaching much more enjoyable. The students will show you respect when you show them your skills and of course after I have cooked for 30 years they see me as a mentor and that is an amazing feeling to show them the cooking skills that they came for to be taught at the college.

Cooking is a skill that takes time to learn and when you teach your students you need a lot of patience, the key to be patience is not to rush the students and to give them time to learn the skill, when you rush them they will make more mistakes and they will lose their confidence. Some students learn quicker then other students and when you give a student some more time to learn the skill probably, it will help them improve quicker then pushing them to work faster, working faster in the kitchen is of course critical because when working in the industry, chefs are expected to work fast and efficient.

Over the last couple of years a lot has changed at the college in terms of the changes in our culinary curriculum, it has been updated to prepare our students when they start working in the culinary field, we prepare them with the right skills so that they can walk into a professional kitchen and be prepared to do the daily task that the Chef requires from his apprentice chefs.

I learned a lot over the last year in my teaching career especially from my students, they taught me how to be patient, to find solutions during class and improve my teaching skills. 

My philosophy of teaching my students is to be the best teacher I can be!!

Dirk Noort C.C.C Professor of Culinary Arts George Brown College