Talented students from Lake Placid's Mountain Lake Academy cater BOCES event with teacher's help
Grilled
chicken and veggie panini. Caprese salad and crab tarts. Truffle-stuffed
chocolate-chip cookies. Does this sound like the menu at your normal
BOCES workshop? Probably not. But that is just what attendees of the
recent Special Education CSE Chairperson Training enjoyed during
their lunch break.
And they have Tina Crego and the students of Mountain Lake Academy to thank for their yummy lunch.
BOCES employee Tina Crego is a Non-District Technical Assistance Specialist with the Regional Special Education Technical Assistance Support Center (RSE-TAS). In this role, she provides assistance related to adolescent literacy, delivery of special education services and use of research based strategies in instruction.
Since April 2010, Tina has been working closely with Mountain Lake Academy, a grades 7-12 residential school for boys with emotional and behavioral difficulties, located in Lake Placid. As part of the program at Mountain Lake, all students are required to work in the kitchen. Many of the boys have enjoyed this work assignment and have shown a real aptitude for the work. So recently, Mountain Lake started a vocational catering company for the students to receive real, community-based experiences they can use on future job applications and resumes.
Crego saw what the boys were doing at Mountain Lake and immediately began work to bring them here to cater an event for Capital Region BOCES.
“This is an example of a program that really works for students,” said Crego. “Not only do the students enjoy the work they do, they are really good at it. Their food is delicious!"
