Chef Débora Valente takes over coordination of the FST Gastronomy course

FST

Débora Valente defends the union between teacher and student in the process of building and rebuilding knowledge

“Gastronomy works with techniques, skills, processes, experiences, alchemy, calculation, history, geography. It is a science that seeks the food and cultural roots of people, everyday and contemporary life. We need concrete activities related to daily life, each person’s reality and the local community, to facilitate the student’s training process and insert them into the gastronomic market”, says chef Débora Valente, food safety specialist, Food & Bebidas (F&B), ambassador of Brazilian Gastronomy and owner of the 2017/2018 Dólmã National Award.

Gastronomy Professor at Faculdade Santa Teresa (FST), she has just taken over the general coordination of the course, with well-defined goals and concepts.

“It is necessary to provide students with moments of protagonism, moving away from the traditional teaching model. I believe that the objective of teaching is not to transmit truths, information or models, but rather to provide the opportunity for the student to build their knowledge, with the teacher’s monitoring. New learning situations arise unexpectedly, making visible, notified and realized how rich the classroom environment is”,

highlights.

Of Sateré-Mawé indigenous origin, the new coordinator brings to the academic environment experiences from childhood and a personal and professional trajectory that prioritized the search for the true and the ethical. “In this way, you teach, but you also learn, because you exchange experiences, forming a bond of respect and mutual knowledge”, she argues.

In the coordinator’s assessment, the curricular proposals for the gastronomy course indicate the need for a new teaching professional, as well as leaders in the F&B segment, determined by a set of skills that can only be built in practice and, above all, in collective reflection on this practice.

“It was with this sense that I built my journey as a teacher and grew a lot during this period. Every day I feel that the experience is much broader and more important than one imagines. It has to be lived, experienced, analyzed, reconstructed and always given new meaning”,

argues.

It also evaluates the new profile of the teacher in the face of the globalized world and new technologies. “It needs to be constantly under construction, adapting its teaching to the reality of each student. “Teachers must take advantage of their autonomy and flexibility to develop their classes, using technological resources and basic materials that, if adapted and inserted into the political-pedagogical project, provide and facilitate both teaching and learning”, she defines.

Débora Valente also defends the union between teacher and student in the process of building and rebuilding knowledge. “Always valuing and respecting the experiences of both, so that there is meaning in this learning. Teaching requires, above all, affection in the relationship with the student.”

Débora states that knowledge of the culture of the states in the North region, mainly the State of Amazonas, is essential for graduates to understand the formation of the original peoples, their contributions to our daily food, among other cultural aspects.

“We don’t have many studies on culture related to local identity, on Amazonian gastronomy. Therefore, we need to build a gastronomic pillar considering the flavors of its forest as an identity, cultural element of the Amazonas tourism, hotel and gastronomic product. It is necessary to think of indigenous gastronomy as the origin of the cuisine of one or more people, in order to preserve the methods and techniques of our ancestors”,

explains.

*With information from consultancy

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