Central Lakes College Occupational Skills Students Compete for Golden Spoon Awards

Central Lakes College Occupational Skills Program students had the opportunity to show off what they have learned this year during the program’s annual Golden Spoon Awards earlier this week.

OSP is a program for students with disabilities and preps them for entry-level jobs and living independently. The Golden Spoon Awards are the program’s culminating final for its critical reasoning cooking lab, as eight students took part in preparing a main dish, soup, salad, or dessert.

Two students compete in each category before presenting their final products to CLC staff and administrators serving as judges.

“The life skills are super important because if the students don’t know to eat healthy food, do their laundry, budget their money, those are all things that play a role in job success,” Central Lakes College Occupational Skills Program Instructor Patty Sloan said. “Our students did great this year. They chose some things that were maybe a little bit of challenge for themselves, which is great. The judges had a really hard time choosing because all of it tasted really good.”

Josh Mitchell won best salad, Hannah Ellstrom took best soup, Blake Rajkowski best main dish, and Caleb Laurent won best dessert.