Job openings

Part-time Teaching Chef

The Initiative, a Vermont Waldorf High School located on the Goddard College campus in Plainfield, is hiring a part-time teaching chef for our innovative Community Lunch culinary program, which has been featured in  the Burlington Free Press, the Times Argus, and VPR. The Community Lunch Chef will work with small groups of 9th- to 12th-grade students to source ingredients for, prepare, and serve a sit-down lunch every Tuesday, and to prepare a soup for students to independently reheat and serve on Thursday.

Strong candidates have experience both cooking for groups and working with teens. They are passionate about the community- and confidence-building potential of culinary education, about engaging youth in local food systems, and about empowering youth to make healthy food choices for themselves and their communities. Strong candidates want to work collegially to fine-tune and enrich the culinary curriculum through connections with other classes and pedagogical goals. They are also both self-directed and entrepreneurial, and able to work within fairly tight budgetary, time and equipment parameters.

This position is ideal for culinary students or food service workers looking to build their education resumes.

Applicants will devote a limited number of their paid hours to working with Initiative development staff on additional grants or fundraisers for the program. This fundraising is necessary to continue the program in a sustainable manner, with some budget for ingredients outside parent donations, through the end of the year. Desire to volunteer on additional fundraising is a perk but is not at all required.

Position details:

• 3 hours/week
• $25/hr
• Seasonal access to garden produce for Community Lunch and for personal consumption as supply allows
• Arrive 11am-2pm or 10:30am -1:30pm

Responsibilities:

• Teach students food preparation and presentation skills
• Work with Initiative staff to create and maintain a community-building environment in both the “back of the house” during prep and the “front of the house” during Community Lunch itself.
• Assist students and Initiative staff in identifying ingredients, soliciting and working with food donations
• Communicate with Initiative staff (who are present at Community Lunch to check in) to plan curricular connections, such as regional or period cuisine connections with social studies, or nutritional connections with science classes.
• Teach students to maintain culinary spaces while cooking
• Assist students and Initiative staff in identifying cleaning practices to maintain the culinary spaces and supplies.

To apply, please send your cover letter and resume to: robert@initiativewaldorf.org, and include “Community Lunch Teaching Chef” in the subject line. You may also call 802-454-1053 for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

Intern at the Initiative!

Apply here through Internships.com

Description

We are a small Waldorf high school on the campus of Goddard College, a few miles from Vermont’s beautiful and vibrant capital of Montpelier. We interview interns for school year and summer programs on a rolling basis, so get in touch!

Our internships include room and partial board (Community Lunch leftovers during the school year and garden produce in the summer). Our scenic campus location has parking, laundry, wifi, bus service, and is walking distance to a quaint but vibrant village with food coop, bookstore, pizza place, farmers’ market, yoga and performing arts venues.

Responsibilities

Our school provides opportunities to develop the skills you want, whether teaching an elective, doing outreach and design, or helping with administration.

The Summer Initiative immerses you in work with 13-16 -year-olds in a biodynamic garden, with activities in the arts, social entrepreneurship and critical service learning. We are also interested in adding a more intensive arts program in one of the summer sessions, so if you have the skill set to help develop and lead programming in any of the arts, in an outdoor-ed-connected setting, please let us know!

School runs from early September-early June, and the Summer Initiative for the month of July. Work days are 8:30-4:00, but during the school year internship you often have significant flex time during the day, and are not expected to work 40 hours / week, closer to 20-30, with some heavier weeks such as trips.

Requirements

As our name suggests, we need people with initiative! Also creativity, flexibility, and a love of young people. Some experience working with teens is ideal, and some gardening and/or arts experience is definitely desired for the summer program. A background check is required by law (we pay for it). A valid driver’s license and a car are plusses but not required.

Skills

Preferred – Teen Programming, Gardening, Arts, Social Media, Adobe InDesign, Video Editing, Digital Photography

About the Initiative:

• Commitment to accessibility as an integral part of the social and pedagogical vision of Rudolph Steiner
• A global, interdisciplinary, and place-grounded curriculum development vision, putting value on the integration of community engagement, service and the arts into all aspects of learning.
• Unique site and potential for expanding outdoor education, summer and visiting-student programs.
• To learn more about Waldorf education, visit WhyWaldorfWorks.org

Folks with non-dominant identities (racial, gender, etc.) are encouraged to apply.