US schools enhance cooking lessons with fancy new kitchens

Large monitors hang overhead as instructor Brooke Emmens talks with students at cooking class in the new culinary lab at Downers Grove South High School, Illinois. The lab is designed to offer a Food Network style experience to attract students to the classes.

Erin Guardi, a senior at Downers Grove South High School, Illinois, wasn’t planning to take a cooking class. She said she was enrolled in a Spanish 4 class the day before school started, but then decided why take a stressful Spanish course?

“I said, let’s do something fun.... Let’s do something that I’ve never done before that’s interesting, so I decided to take culinary, ” she said.