Have you noticed how nice the G wing hallway smells? Well, that’s Mrs. Koring’s classroom. 

Amy Koring is the new teacher for family, consumer science, and culinary arts classes at Hershey High School. 

After the Family Consumer Science, or FCS, program fell apart during COVID-19, Koring was hired last year to bring it back. 

As can be inferred, this class is very hands-on. Koring takes a different approach than most teachers do. 

“You have to be willing to think on your toes,” Koring said about culinary arts.

First off, she requires very little memorization. Koring explained that it simply would not make much sense to require it in a real-life skills class. She instead opts to teach her students how and where to find information online since people tend to not memorize lists of ingredients before making a dish in real life. 

In fact, in response to being asked what the most important skill in this class is, she said, “know[ing] where to go to find your information” is the most important. This approach lets her class learn more dishes and do more cooking. 

Although this approach is pretty different compared to the typical classroom, it works extremely well. 

Before Koring taught at Hershey, she taught several classes at Manheim Central. The courses she taught included: nutrition, consumer education, and family living. 

Koring said these courses were all required to graduate, unlike Hershey. Along with high school, she taught home life and consumer education classes at the middle school. 

After that, she became a houseparent and took care of multiple boys at Milton Hershey, along with her own, for 10 years. 

After leaving Milton Hershey, she started teaching at Carlisle High School. “It was the day before school started, so they may have been desperate,” Koring said about her second teaching job. 

After Aric graduated from Vista, a state-of-the art school for kids with autism, she planned to switch jobs again. It was around this time that she came to Hershey. Koring had asked if there were any potential openings, preferably FCS programs. 

Around the time COVID started, Hershey’s culinary arts program had shut down because the previous teacher had retired. Because classes were online during COVID, there was not much of an effort to revitalize it. However, last year, there was a push to get these classes back in our curriculum. 

As a result, when course selection time came, there were five Family Consumer Science classes offered. It was also around this time that the school contacted Koring since she was interested in this job. 

After several rounds of interviews, Koring was finally ready to start teaching.