Lessons from EPCTC Chef Walker, RIHA Teacher of the Year

Westport chef has moved from kitchen to classroom

By Kristen Ray
Posted 5/10/19

EAST PROVIDENCE — On a recent Friday morning in East Providence Career and Technical Center, Chef Bill Walker is in good spirits. For the last two weeks he had been battling with his guitar, …

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Lessons from EPCTC Chef Walker, RIHA Teacher of the Year

Westport chef has moved from kitchen to classroom

Posted

EAST PROVIDENCE — On a recent Friday morning in East Providence Career and Technical Center, Chef Bill Walker is in good spirits. For the last two weeks he had been battling with his guitar, struggling to strum out the tune of John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” back at his home in Westport.
It could have been easy for Mr. Walker to have given up, yet he persisted, recalling the mantra he so often repeats to his students: ‘Compare yourself to you, yesterday.’
With that in mind, he continued to practice for just a little bit each day, all the while inching closer to his goal until finally, the previous night, he struck gold. His fingers moved where they were supposed to, the notes rang out like they were meant. The sweet sounds of “Small Town” were suddenly filling the house.
No matter that his 12-year-old son was the only witness to this accomplishment; the only person Mr. Walker was trying to impress, after all, was himself.
Sharing a lesson such as this is just one of the many examples of how Mr. Walker has strived to go above and beyond for his students throughout his 18-year-career in education, helping to earn him the 2018 Teacher of the Year award from the Rhode Island Hospitality Association.
Early beginnings
While his passion for education would come much later, Mr. Walker’s calling to the culinary industry began early in life. At just eight years old, his mother — fascinated by French culture — had the pair sitting down to watch “In the Kitchen with Jacques and Julia.” Afterwards, they would experiment together with different recipes. Mr. Walker started out making eggs, then slowly graduated on to whipping up chocolate mousses and cooking Peking duck (an incident that involved, to his sister’s dismay, his mother hanging the bird from the air conditioning vent). As it would turn out, cooking was an activity Mr. Walker found he genuinely enjoyed.
“It opened up a whole new world,” he said.
At 14, he picked up a gig working in the local pizzeria in his neighborhood of Queens, NY, Lenny’s where he lived until his graduation from high school just three years later. Not enticed by traditional academics, Mr. Walker set off for culinary school at Johnson and Wales University, where — younger and smaller than all of his peers — he felt intimidated for the first time.
“I wanted to quit and go home very quickly,” he said.
In fact, he nearly did. After a serious bout of food poisoning sent him back to New York for a month, Mr. Walker was ready to accept the incident as an omen and give up right then and there. His parents, however, felt differently, pushing their son to return to school once his health had improved. Now far behind, Mr. Walker’s schedule was stacked full with classes, homework and work, yet, somehow, it was exactly the sort of routine he needed to get himself back on track.
“For whatever reason that was a pivotal moment, and then I did okay.”
Career uncertainties
Upon his graduation from JWU, Mr. Walker had just one plan in mind — to cook. Initially, the goal had been to travel as a chef on cruise ships, but an investment in a Doberman during his junior year of college thwarted that dream.
Instead, he (and dog) spent the better part of the next decade opening up eateries for Uno Restaurants and Brinker International all over the country, where training new employees was a large part of his job description. And twice he returned to working at Lenny’s.
The first time, right out of college, Mr. Walker was more than happy to return to working alongside owner and close friend Joe Cervone. But his friend came to recognize that Mr. Walker had become too comfortable there, and ultimately forced him to seek a more challenging position. The next time Mr. Walker returned, however, was different — he’d come to fill in for an ailing Mr. Cervone. But now in his mid-twenties, living in a run-down apartment with a less-than-shimmering social life, he new something was amiss.
“I felt like I was destined for something bigger or better but I wasn’t doing anything about it,” Mr. Walker said.
Eventually, it was his mother who helped point Mr. Walker in the direction he was meant to go. Shortly before passing away, she encouraged her son to pursue education and the thought had resonated. That fall, he enrolled in a master’s program at JWU and, immediately after graduation, was hired to teach both there and at East Providence Career and Technical Center.
“She was great. She kind of convinced me to become a teacher—which, thank goodness she did.”
Building relationships
While in graduate school, Mr. Walker learned that a lot of his past experience would transfer well into his new career in education. Where once he had shown trainees how to make a pasta sauce or craft the dough, he was now using those techniques with his students. But there was more that Mr. Walker still had yet to get a handle on. At the beginning, when a student was acting out in class, Mr. Walker had a tendency to fight right back — a method, he quickly realized, was going to neither teacher nor student very far.
“You don’t want to be the villain in someone else’s story,” he said, “You want to be the hero.”
Instead, he employed a lesson that he had learned from watching his mother with her students. Teaching foreign language at one of the most unsafe schools in New York City, she understood her role was more about offering a stable and supportive presence to a group of kids for who stability and support were in short supply.
“She wanted them to be successful as people,” he recalled.
Now, Mr. Walker takes every opportunity to better get to know his students as individuals. He asks them about their collegiate aspirations, if they are working after school, whether or not they play sports, what classes are a struggle. To him, it matters less whether they pursue a career in food service than whether they are challenging themselves in whatever makes them happy. And are they making a bit of progress toward that goal each day. The approach has helped build lasting relationships with his students. At the end of March, he will attend the wedding of a student who graduated 15 years ago; another student babysat his son. On Facebook, a “Chef Walker’s Former Students” page exists, and anyone who encounters him in person still calls him, simply and respectfully, “chef.”
“Once you’re my kid, you’re my kid forever.”
Reaping the rewards
After spending time teaching at BMC Durfee High School, Cape Code Technical High School, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and Salve Regina University, this fall marked Mr. Walker’s third year returning to East Providence Career and Technical Center. Early on in the semester, he had gotten an email to call the Rhode Island Hospitality Association. Thinking something was wrong, Mr. Walker was hesitant at first, but the conversation could not have gone more differently. As it turned out, they had just named Mr. Walker their 2018 Teacher of the Year.
“No one was more surprised than me,” he said.
After being honored at the 29th annual Stars of the Industry awards ceremony this past November, Mr. Walker will now represent the Rhode Island bid for the national educator title this upcoming May in Washington, DC. In preparation, he was tasked with reaching out to former or current students to ask them write him a letter of recommendation.
One student shared how being in Mr. Walker’s class changed the direction his life was going; another discussed how it forced him to challenge himself and think outside of the box. Some were stories Mr. Walker knew; others, he was just learning for the first time. … it was all quite moving, he said.
“That’s what being a teacher is about: You may never see that end result, but one day they will eat the fruit and remember it was you who had planted the seed.”

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