Empowered: Kicking off Christmas at Chesterfield College!

This week we’ve had an exciting demonstration from a professional chef, some lessons for local school children and officially started the Christmas celebrations at College!

Hospitality and Professional Cookery

Level 2 Professional Cookery students recently benefitted from an incredible demonstration from Rupert Rowley, a chef from MSK, who previously worked as an Executive Head Chef of Fischer’s at Baslow Hall, where he held a Michelin Star for 17 years as well as owning his own restaurant and bar, Rowley’s. At MSK, he set up and runs the MSK Academy programme where he supports staff and students in a growing number of colleges around the country with his expertise.

Rupert gave our students an insight into molecular gastronomy, demonstrating a variety of new techniques and products that students can use to elevate their cooking. They were then given their own task to practice using some of these techniques and ingredients and even got the chance to taste some of the amazing things MSK can create. It’s so incredibly important for us to allow industry professionals and guest speakers to come into College to speak with our students so they can gain new perspectives and skills.

Childhood Studies

Alongside staff and other students, our Childhood Studies students recently hosted a number of practical lessons for a local school, Staveley Junior School. These taster sessions lasted most of the day and allowed our students to gain industry level experience working with children and allowed local children to visit the College and get a taste of what we have on offer.

They were split into groups to make sure they could trial as many subjects as possible, which included playing dodgeball in the Sports Hall, making pottery monsters in the Art department and even learning to sing in sign language! It was an incredible day for all of the students and staff and we hope to host more like this in the future.

Attendance Pays

We recently launched our new attendance scheme where we monitor the attendance of each tutor group to encourage higher attendance, every two weeks the highest attending group or the most improved attending group is rewarded with up to the value of £100.

Our latest winners of the £100 prize were Level 2 Mechanical Maintenance Engineering students who achieved an outstanding 98.9% attendance over the last two weeks. The same students recently took part in our Open Evening as student ambassadors and they students were incredibly excited to win this award to celebrate their successes. It’s amazing to see such a dedicated group of students here at Chesterfield College!

It’s Christmas!

This week we officially kicked of the Christmas celebrations and put up our huge tree in the reception! Our beautiful new tree is decorated in our College colours, with bows, lights and giant baubles. It was so much fun seeing our staff decorate the tree and listen to some Christmas songs in true holiday spirit. Despite our blue and silver theming, we have a fun tradition at College to hide a tiny red bauble somewhere in the giant tree, so why not take a look when you’re next on campus and see if you can spot it.

Our library are also hosting a Christmas card competition over the next few weeks. To enter the competition, design and make your own Christmas card which can be handmade or digitally printed. You can pick up a blank card from the library if you’d like and once you have finished your card, either drop it off to the library or send it to: librarymain@chesterfield.ac.uk. All entries need to be in by Monday 16th December and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 17th December. Good luck to everyone taking part!

Coming up

Taste Restaurant have launched their new Christmas lunch and dinner menus, this is a great opportunity for teams to come together and celebrate, so make sure you secure yours now! Take a look at the Taste Restaurant Facebook page to take a look at the dates and menus.

We have an upcoming music showcase on the 16th of December with live music performances from our students, our end of year pantomime by performing arts on various dates and lots of exciting Christmas celebrations!