Last week, I finished my first rotation of my dietetic internship (Foodservice management and school nutrition education)! It felt like the 13 weeks flew by!
Some of the things I did during my rotation included:
-Menu planning: created a 6-week cycle menu for the school district; input menu items into PrimeroEdge system (similar to that of NutriKids); assigned menus for the district; created new recipes (and taste tested them); ran nutrient analysis of the menu items to ensure that they met the guidelines for SLP.
-Kitchen work: observed/participated in ordering, inventory, serving, food prep, temperature/sanitation check, etc.
-Lesson planning: taught a 3-day lesson for 6th grade students; taught a fitness/nutrition lesson for 1st and 2nd graders; in-service for staff members.
-Research project: I created a new chickpea salad, had it taste-tested, and put it on the menu. I was trying to determine if increasing student involvement in the planning of new items and implementing the changes they made, would increase consumption.
-Miscellaneous work: answered phone calls in the office; organized nutrition materials, made posters for events, etc.
Things I learned throughout my rotation:
1. Always, always, always ask questions! Sometimes, I felt like I was bothering people asking them; however, everyone was really friendly and there to help. The internship is to help you learn more about nutrition, so asking questions about things you are not sure of is needed.
2. Be confident in what you know and how you speak about it. If you sound unsure, people won't trust what you say. I've said it before and I'll say it again, you know more than you think!
3. Before a food service rotation (in a school district), brush up on food safety, the school lunch program, and food science (I definitely didn't study much on food science until I realized I needed to know some for my rotation).
4. Nurses would call a lot about carbohydrate counts for menu items in order to give insulin to the kids with diabetes. If you find yourself answering these types of questions be sure to have menu nutritionals on hand (I found nurses to be calling last minute and frantic).
5. Get as many resources as you can from the RD or FS manager. My RD had a SafeServ book, Inman's Review, and miscellaneous lesson/training binders, which will all be helpful in studying for the RD exam. She also mentioned she only used Inman's Review for the RD exam and passed the first time.
6. Take the initiative on projects and tasks whenever you can. Not only will this give you great experience, but, it will also show the staff you are committed and a team player. Even doing small tasks without complaint are noticed.
7. If you find downtime in your rotation, read food service related materials (I found this to be helpful when taking my comprehensive exam) and/or ask what else you could be doing to help.
8. Be flexible! Things will not always go to plan. Just roll with the punches and do what you can to make the situation run smoothly.
9. Accept the changes that happen. This kind of goes along with number 8. One day you may have planned to do x, y, and z; however, you may get something new thrown your way. An employee (or 5) might call out, and you need to help in the kitchen. A truck may have broken down and you need to drive the manager around. Anything can change in foodservice! (By the way, these things have all happened in my rotation).
10. Be ahead/aware of all your assignments/tasks. You never know when something will come up that relates to an assignment. It really helps to have your assignment sheet on hand.
Overall, I had an amazing rotation. It was stressful at some points; however, in the end, I wouldn't have changed anything. I really feel like I developed/fine tuned my leadership and interpersonal skills.
Hopefully, my experiences will help you in preparing/finishing your food service rotations!
Showing posts with label school nutrition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school nutrition. Show all posts
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Food Service Management Rotation: Tips and Information
This Monday, I will be heading into week 8 of my Food Service Management rotation of my Dietetic internship. It seems as though the time is flying by! I can't believe I am halfway through my longest rotation of my internship. Things have gotten a little more stressful; however, I found that being able to manage my time efficiently has worked to my benefit.
Throughout the past few weeks, I really had to step up, in terms of leadership and initiative. My old preceptor (an RD) had left to join the Navy. My new preceptor was the General Manager, who had a ton of things to do already. My new preceptor would run errands around the schools in the morning and attend various meetings. This left me alone in the office for the majority of the time. I found myself becoming the RD for the school district. All of the carb counting and menu nutrition questions came to me. I also sat at the RD desk and answered various parent and employee phone calls. Some of the calls were pretty basic (how do I load money on my child's account) while others required a lot more thought and time (child allergies and special diets).
The school district I am working with uses a program called PrimeroEdge, which is similar to NutriKids, just way more in depth and complicated. This program was where you inputted ingredients, recipes, and cycle menus for the district. It was my duty to create the menus in the system, and assign them to the schools in the district so they could complete their production records. The program is a very useful tool; however, the first few weeks were very difficult, as I was teaching myself how to use it. Once I mastered certain aspects of the program, things ran a lot smoother. One thing I had to consider was the slowness of the program. It is internet-based, so it gets very overloaded at certain times of the day (mid morning and late afternoon). Just adding in 1 ingredient to 1 day often took 5 minutes because of the webpage loading time. I had to plan when I would input and assign menus, so that I would not be using the program at its slow times.
The past few weeks were very stressful; however, the experiences I had strengthened my leadership and conflict negotiation skills. I also got much better at handling employee issues and multi-department management. I had to make a lot of decisions, so it was important to trust my knowledge and use good judgement. Management was very impressed with my work ethic and ability to handle what was thrown at me. I just did what I needed to do because at some times, no one else had the training I had to do it (answering carb or specific nutrient questions). It felt really good when upper management talked about me so highly to other administrative employees. I wasn't just an intern working there anymore. I had gained a lot more respect than that. When the new RD came in, I found myself training her. It was a very weird feeling for me, the intern, to be training someone in a higher up position, none-the-less, an RD. Much of what I trained her on was office procedures, PrimeroEdge (she had been using NutriKids), kitchen location, etc.
During her first week, the new RD had brought in a lot of materials for me to look through; including her RD test review binder, teaching resources, and a ServSafe training manual. The ServSafe book was a better resource for me than my college food service textbook. It laid out everything in a short and simple format. I would definitely suggest adding this to your resource library. She also brought in a book called "Strengths based Leadership." I haven't gotten a chance to read the whole book yet; however, after glancing through a few chapters, it is well worth the read.
Another major portion of my time over the past few weeks was spent on various lesson plans, presentations, and building promotional materials. My next blog will be on the lessons I taught and tips for teaching various age groups.
Tips for FSM Rotation
1. Whether you are in a distance or on-site program, it is really important to plan out your assignments at the beginning of your rotation. Try to knock out the easier assignments/tasks in the beginning. Since I needed my preceptor's help with scheduling things for other assignments, I tried to do what I could on my own.
2. Give your preceptor an updated assignment list after you have gone through a few weeks. My preceptor needed to be reminded of my assignments on a daily/weekly basis. He was very busy with other duties of his own, so this was pretty typical. It helped to scale down my assignment sheet to things that just dealt with him. It made it easier to work through assignments and get things planned ahead of time.
3. Be flexible! As much as planning is helpful, always be prepared to change up what you are doing. An employee might call about an issue that needs to be handled ASAP; you might have to switch up dates for meetings or presentations. Expect change to happen and roll with it. It will just make everything run a lot smoother.
4. Be able to multi-task. A lot of times I would be working on something (making a poster, writing a lesson) and I would get phone calls, or questions handed to me. Being able to handle multiple tasks, without stressing out, will really help your rotation run smoothly.
5. Work on negotiation and conflict resolution skills. If you haven't had much training or read a lot on these 2 topics, do so. I found myself researching them a lot as I moved through the leadership portion of my rotation.
Lastly, if you are still working at a job during your internship, kudos to you! If you are thinking about whether or not you should keep your job, know that it is manageable with the internship. I still maintain my position at a YMCA teaching nutrition. I have 7 different classes during the week that I teach. I am lucky, in that I was able to schedule the classes at a certain time that worked best for me. My earliest class starts at 4:45pm. This gives me enough time to get from my internship to the teaching site. While my weeks are very busy, it is manageable with proper scheduling and time management!
Throughout the past few weeks, I really had to step up, in terms of leadership and initiative. My old preceptor (an RD) had left to join the Navy. My new preceptor was the General Manager, who had a ton of things to do already. My new preceptor would run errands around the schools in the morning and attend various meetings. This left me alone in the office for the majority of the time. I found myself becoming the RD for the school district. All of the carb counting and menu nutrition questions came to me. I also sat at the RD desk and answered various parent and employee phone calls. Some of the calls were pretty basic (how do I load money on my child's account) while others required a lot more thought and time (child allergies and special diets).
The school district I am working with uses a program called PrimeroEdge, which is similar to NutriKids, just way more in depth and complicated. This program was where you inputted ingredients, recipes, and cycle menus for the district. It was my duty to create the menus in the system, and assign them to the schools in the district so they could complete their production records. The program is a very useful tool; however, the first few weeks were very difficult, as I was teaching myself how to use it. Once I mastered certain aspects of the program, things ran a lot smoother. One thing I had to consider was the slowness of the program. It is internet-based, so it gets very overloaded at certain times of the day (mid morning and late afternoon). Just adding in 1 ingredient to 1 day often took 5 minutes because of the webpage loading time. I had to plan when I would input and assign menus, so that I would not be using the program at its slow times.
The past few weeks were very stressful; however, the experiences I had strengthened my leadership and conflict negotiation skills. I also got much better at handling employee issues and multi-department management. I had to make a lot of decisions, so it was important to trust my knowledge and use good judgement. Management was very impressed with my work ethic and ability to handle what was thrown at me. I just did what I needed to do because at some times, no one else had the training I had to do it (answering carb or specific nutrient questions). It felt really good when upper management talked about me so highly to other administrative employees. I wasn't just an intern working there anymore. I had gained a lot more respect than that. When the new RD came in, I found myself training her. It was a very weird feeling for me, the intern, to be training someone in a higher up position, none-the-less, an RD. Much of what I trained her on was office procedures, PrimeroEdge (she had been using NutriKids), kitchen location, etc.
During her first week, the new RD had brought in a lot of materials for me to look through; including her RD test review binder, teaching resources, and a ServSafe training manual. The ServSafe book was a better resource for me than my college food service textbook. It laid out everything in a short and simple format. I would definitely suggest adding this to your resource library. She also brought in a book called "Strengths based Leadership." I haven't gotten a chance to read the whole book yet; however, after glancing through a few chapters, it is well worth the read.
Another major portion of my time over the past few weeks was spent on various lesson plans, presentations, and building promotional materials. My next blog will be on the lessons I taught and tips for teaching various age groups.
Tips for FSM Rotation
1. Whether you are in a distance or on-site program, it is really important to plan out your assignments at the beginning of your rotation. Try to knock out the easier assignments/tasks in the beginning. Since I needed my preceptor's help with scheduling things for other assignments, I tried to do what I could on my own.
2. Give your preceptor an updated assignment list after you have gone through a few weeks. My preceptor needed to be reminded of my assignments on a daily/weekly basis. He was very busy with other duties of his own, so this was pretty typical. It helped to scale down my assignment sheet to things that just dealt with him. It made it easier to work through assignments and get things planned ahead of time.
3. Be flexible! As much as planning is helpful, always be prepared to change up what you are doing. An employee might call about an issue that needs to be handled ASAP; you might have to switch up dates for meetings or presentations. Expect change to happen and roll with it. It will just make everything run a lot smoother.
4. Be able to multi-task. A lot of times I would be working on something (making a poster, writing a lesson) and I would get phone calls, or questions handed to me. Being able to handle multiple tasks, without stressing out, will really help your rotation run smoothly.
5. Work on negotiation and conflict resolution skills. If you haven't had much training or read a lot on these 2 topics, do so. I found myself researching them a lot as I moved through the leadership portion of my rotation.
Lastly, if you are still working at a job during your internship, kudos to you! If you are thinking about whether or not you should keep your job, know that it is manageable with the internship. I still maintain my position at a YMCA teaching nutrition. I have 7 different classes during the week that I teach. I am lucky, in that I was able to schedule the classes at a certain time that worked best for me. My earliest class starts at 4:45pm. This gives me enough time to get from my internship to the teaching site. While my weeks are very busy, it is manageable with proper scheduling and time management!
Monday, August 26, 2013
First Week of FSM Rotation
This past week, I completed my first 5 days of my food service management rotation. Overall, I think the rotation went pretty well. I attended a lot of meetings and in-service trainings, so I was able to meet most of the staff that I would be seeing throughout my rotation. It was very interesting to see the dynamic among the food service workers in the schools. A lot of the employees had strong bonds and cliches with other employees of their specific school. I could see the vast amount of support both the food service workers and managers had for one another. That is something I will come to appreciate even more throughout my tougher weeks of my internship.
I found myself having a lot of time to work on assignments and plan/prepare upcoming projects and studies. It was definitely helpful for me to bring my laptop, assignment binder, and resources to pull ideas from.
Before leaving for the weekend, I received some unexpected news from my preceptor and the general manager. I was super nervous before the 3 of us sat down for the meeting. My preceptor had said, 15 minutes before, that her and the boss needed to speak with me about something. I don't know about anyone else, but, my immediate thought was, "Uh-oh, what did I do?" After stopping my train of negative, rash thoughts, I reminded myself that it was my first week, and it was probably something un-related to me.
Much to my surprise, I was informed that my preceptor would be leaving that next Friday to join the Navy as an RD! While this was very exciting news for her, I was a little worried about the rest of my rotation. Who would become my preceptor? Did they know all of the work involved? Would I be able to complete everything that was required of me?
Again, once I calmed myself from my racing thoughts, I came to realize that I could do this. It was just another bump in the road. Plus, I not only had the support of the management team and staff; however, I also had the support of my internship director and fellow interns. Having an RD for food service management wasn't a requirement for my program, so I was lucky enough to have one as my preceptor. It was decided that the general manager would be taking over the position as my preceptor. He is quite knowledgable and understands that I have a lot of different assignments required of me.
My current preceptor and I sat down this week to plan out all of the school nutrition assignments and set up meetings with who I needed to speak with. My preceptor is much more informed on not only general nutrition, but also nutrition education in schools. That being said, her and I worked together so that she could continue to be a resource to me for the last week of her working there.
Next week will definitely be a change with the school year up and going. Not only will management be down a staff member, but I will be working with a new preceptor. This situation reminds me of something that my internship director had said to me. It went something like "You can plan out what you want to do for food service and how you want your assignments to go; however, there will be some days that everything will just go completely off plan. You need to be ready to deal with whatever is there and be flexible." That statement has never been so true!
On a final note, I received an official badge from the school district I am working in. Under my name it says "Support Staff." Boy, do I feel important :):)
I found myself having a lot of time to work on assignments and plan/prepare upcoming projects and studies. It was definitely helpful for me to bring my laptop, assignment binder, and resources to pull ideas from.
Before leaving for the weekend, I received some unexpected news from my preceptor and the general manager. I was super nervous before the 3 of us sat down for the meeting. My preceptor had said, 15 minutes before, that her and the boss needed to speak with me about something. I don't know about anyone else, but, my immediate thought was, "Uh-oh, what did I do?" After stopping my train of negative, rash thoughts, I reminded myself that it was my first week, and it was probably something un-related to me.
Much to my surprise, I was informed that my preceptor would be leaving that next Friday to join the Navy as an RD! While this was very exciting news for her, I was a little worried about the rest of my rotation. Who would become my preceptor? Did they know all of the work involved? Would I be able to complete everything that was required of me?
Again, once I calmed myself from my racing thoughts, I came to realize that I could do this. It was just another bump in the road. Plus, I not only had the support of the management team and staff; however, I also had the support of my internship director and fellow interns. Having an RD for food service management wasn't a requirement for my program, so I was lucky enough to have one as my preceptor. It was decided that the general manager would be taking over the position as my preceptor. He is quite knowledgable and understands that I have a lot of different assignments required of me.
My current preceptor and I sat down this week to plan out all of the school nutrition assignments and set up meetings with who I needed to speak with. My preceptor is much more informed on not only general nutrition, but also nutrition education in schools. That being said, her and I worked together so that she could continue to be a resource to me for the last week of her working there.
Next week will definitely be a change with the school year up and going. Not only will management be down a staff member, but I will be working with a new preceptor. This situation reminds me of something that my internship director had said to me. It went something like "You can plan out what you want to do for food service and how you want your assignments to go; however, there will be some days that everything will just go completely off plan. You need to be ready to deal with whatever is there and be flexible." That statement has never been so true!
On a final note, I received an official badge from the school district I am working in. Under my name it says "Support Staff." Boy, do I feel important :):)
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