ELAINE HEILMAN HAS TAUGHT HER STUDENTS SKILLS FOR THE KITCHEN – AND FOR LIFE
STORY BY Angela Dale PORTRAIT BY André Chung
When Elaine Heilman was a teenager, she was told she’d never make it as a chef. Working summers in her family’s hotel and restaurant business in Michigan, she loved the action in her aunt’s commercial kitchen. But when she told her aunt about her dream of becoming a chef, her aunt told her, “You can work in the front and be a server, but you can never be a chef.” Why? Heilman wanted to know. She recalls her aunt telling her, “Because chefs have to be men, they have to be strong.” And there was more, her aunt said, “You’re not only a woman, you’re short.”
Twenty-five years’ worth of graduates from the culinary program at Howard County Public Schools’ Applications and Research Lab (ARL) are grateful that Heilman, who tops out at 5 feet, 1 inch, didn’t heed that early warning. As Kara Lovalvo, a recent 2009 graduate of Centennial High School, who is now a student at the New England Culinary Institute puts it, “(Heilman) is the reason I am where I am now. She taught me the basics – of everything.”
Mary Day, a past principal at ARL, which offers career academics so high school students can enter the work world, agrees that Heilman has been a force in the program. “I can’t say enough about her energy, her enthusiasm, her caring for kids, her creativity,” says Day, adding, “she’s a good cook.” In October, after 25 years of teaching, Heilman will retire.
Many students will remember Heilman as “that” teacher. The teacher who makes a difference. And, in Heilman’s case, the teacher who just happens to be a killer chef.
Randal Shircel, who graduated in 1994, recalls feeling adrift in the school system, due to dyslexia. He signed up for Heilman’s class because he could navigate the textbook. But he remained, he says, due to Heilman’s encouragement. “I grew up
faster and smarter about life in general,” thanks to the culinary arts teacher, says Shircel. “She was my school mom.”
Heilman helped Shircel, a freshman in a program usually reserved for juniors and seniors, set goals as well as a course to achieve them. When he nearly dropped out of school at age 14 due to family financial issues, Heilman helped him find an after-school restaurant job. After four years under the mentorship of Chef H – as she is affectionately known – Shircel graduated with his pick of culinary school scholarships and now works in research and development at Ventura Foods, creating products for national chains like Chili’s, Domino’s and Denny’s. Chef H, he says, “set the foundation. She’s one of the main reasons I’m successful.”
Heilman wasn’t always a teacher, or even a chef. Discouraged by her aunt, Heilman pursued a degree in governmental accounting at West Virginia University. She also began catering on the side. With friends and clients praising her culinary talents, she decided to enroll in the American Culinary Federation’s apprenticeship program at Northern Virginia Community College. For the program internship, Heilman worked at a country club, where she was assigned to a mentor. The mentor, says Heilman, “was a woman, and she was short, just like me. But she was the executive chef. I thought, if she can do it, I know I can too.”
As a working chef, Heilman recognized the challenge of learning in the “fast-paced and hot” restaurant setting. She began to think about teaching. “I thought, if I ever have the opportunity, I would love to train people before they’re thrown into the intensive atmosphere of a kitchen.”
The opening at ARL was just what she was looking for, she says. Principal Mary Day recalls the day she hired Heilman: “I struck it rich that day.”
The ARL program has evolved over the years, but one constant has been Heilman’s focus on “cooking the way it’s done in a real restaurant.” In the early days she launched a monthly Gourmet Night, where students transformed their classrooms and commercial kitchen into a working restaurant, preparing and serving seven-course meals to 60 lucky reservation holders.
Later, when Heilman got her students involved in the Maryland State Competition for Culinary and Restaurant Management, they took first place each of the five years they entered, earning a spot at nationals. These competitions, which required preparing a three-course gourmet meal in 60 minutes – on two butane burners with no refrigeration, electricity or running water – demanded focus, organization and creativity. Students also competed to debone a chicken wing in seconds flat and improvise an oven using two sauté pans. Kara Lovalvo was captain of the 2009 team that used those two sauté pans to produce a vanilla tuille that adorned the team’s winning Saffron Ginger Panna Cotta. She gives plenty of credit to Heilman. “I couldn’t have asked for a better culinary teacher,” she says.
When she first began teaching, Heilman says, she thought the goal was to train her students to become chefs. But that’s not how it worked out. “As I began to grow as an educator I realized I needed to teach the kids life skills,” she says, “how to think, to organize and adapt to anything that comes their way,” skills, she says that would help them in any job.
It’s unlikely that in retirement, Heilman will stop cooking. “For the first couple of months, I’m going to major in putzing,” she says with a laugh. And, naturally, she plans to cook for her family. “I absolutely love cooking for my family,” she says. But leaving ARL does pose a challenge, “I got spoiled. If I needed to bake for the holidays, I would stay after school and use my big baking ovens.” She does have a solution. She’s in the process of renovating her home kitchen, she says, “so I can play.” *
