For some L-C students, the goal is to develop everyday life skills. For others, it’s an opportunity to explore a potential career path.

No matter their reason for enrolling in the Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) curriculum within the Luxemburg-Casco School District, student needs are met through two courses at the middle-school level and seven different classes within LCHS.

“This is not the home ec program of back in the day,” says Sarah Wellens, in her third year as a FACS teacher at

Luxemburg-Casco after 12 years in the Green Bay School District. “Students still learn valuable life skills, but it’s more career-focused – they are exposed to career opportunities.”

Seventh-grade students are offered an introductory class that entails units on child development, cooking and sewing.

The culinary unit begins by educating students on safety and sanitation, working with egg-based food products like pancakes and tacos to teach the importance of avoiding cross contamination. By semester’s end, there is a baking section to learn yeast skills.

Eighth-graders have the opportunity to take a cooking and sewing class as a lead-in to high school. For their final culinary lab, each student chooses an item to show off the skills and cooking methods they have learned. Nutrition and wellness also are taught.

“In middle school, we would like students to get a taste of the FACS curriculum, along with becoming comfortable in a kitchen setting and developing life skills,” says Wellens, who grew up in a family of teachers and whose mother, Nancy, was a FACS teacher. “Things like how to use a sewing machine and needle. They should start to get a comfort level. We also dive deeper into potential career paths.”

L-C Middle School FACS students benefit greatly from the move to a brand-new school building in 2020, resulting out of passage of facilities-based referendum.

“Everything for the students was new,” says Wellens, who teaches FACS at both the middle school and high school. “It was a much-needed upgrade in terms of stoves, microwaves and kitchen aids – the tools that students will run into more frequently. Along with the sewing machines and related equipment, we have everything that our students need to be successful in these programs.”

As students transition to high school, there is a wider range of FACS courses available to them. In Grade 9, L-C students can choose to take Health Occupations, which is designed to introduce them to a variety of careers in healthcare, providing the opportunity to “rule it in or rule it out,” according to LCHS FACS Teacher Amber Connor. If the course piques their interest, students then have the opportunity to enroll in follow-on classes within the Bellin College Healthcare Academy.

Other FACS courses taught at the high-school level include Culinary Basics, Advanced Culinary Arts, Sewing and Textiles, Child Development, Assistant Childcare Teacher, and Family Relationships.

In Culinary Basics, students learn basic skills within the kitchen, such as reading a recipe, how to follow instructions, using critical thinking when something needs to be changed, and how to troubleshoot. Working within a group also is an important skill taught. The final culinary lab is making calzones from scratch.

Child Development takes students from conception to around age 2. They learn about the developing child, along with how to keep the mother and baby safe.

“Many students think that Child Development is a very important class for them to have,” says Connor, who has taught at L-C for 15 of her 17 years as a FACs teacher, “to learn about the human body, babies, pregnancy and labor, and delivery.”

The Assistant Childcare Teacher course provides students with the opportunity to earn state ACCT certification, an

industry-recognized credential overseen by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This certification can help students obtain childcare positions through the youth apprenticeship program.

The Family Relationships course covers healthy and unhealthy human relationships, along with how to communicate in all types of relationships. “Students take this class to learn more about other people,” Connor adds.

The classroom experience also was improved for FACS students at the high school level through the facilities referendum of 2018. They now utilize a new industrial kitchen equipped with a gas stove, as well as an electric, industrial convection oven.

“It’s important for students to be familiar with gas – it’s a very different level of cooking,” says Connor. “The best part of our new classroom is that it’s an open-concept facility, so I can see students working from anywhere. That makes it easier to instruct them. They also can see what others are doing and can communicate with each other.”

The Family and Consumer Sciences curriculum is one piece of the well-rounded educational experience provided to Luxemburg-Casco students in the district’s upper levels. Not only does it provide valuable life skills and hands-on career exploration, but many students also say it’s fun.

That is a combination that is hard to beat.