Meet Kaylie: “A Head Start In My Future Career.”

Kaylie went to a CTE event expecting to talk to people. She came home with a job offer.

Featuring Kaylie

Lemon tarts. Cream puffs. Gelato. Chocolate mousse. Fruit tarts. Kaylie runs through the list the way anyone describes work they've done enough times to stop counting it.

She is a junior at Cloverdale High School.

Kaylie is the pastry chef at Rustic, the restaurant at Francis Ford Coppola Winery, and she got the job in April at a career summit she attended with her class - out of a conversation she had no expectation would turn into anything.

It started freshman year, in a culinary class she took because it sounded fun. She hit it off with her teacher, Ms. Buckner, and worked well enough that Ms. Buckner came looking for her the next year with a recommendation.

"She told me about the farm-to-table class, and she said that she really, really wanted me in that class because of how well I worked in her culinary class," Kaylie says.

Farm-to-table is one of the career pathway courses that lets students build toward an industry while they're still in high school. It isn't only cooking. Students bake and cook, but they also trace the ingredients backward - the growers, the seasons, the supply chain sitting behind a menu. That was the part that got Kaylie’s attention.

"It was pretty fun to not only bake and cook, but to find out where most of the stuff comes from."

In April, her entire farm-to-table class went to the Food & Beverage Career Summit in Santa Rosa, where students spend the day talking with the people who actually run the county's food and beverage businesses. Kaylie went in with modest expectations.

"I wasn't expecting to get a job offer. I wasn't expecting to do any of that. I was just expecting to talk to people."

She got into a conversation with the head chef that ran about thirty minutes. He offered her the job that day.

Then came the part nobody can prepare you for.

"The first day, it was really exciting. I didn't know what was gonna happen, I didn't know who I was gonna meet." She got there, the kitchen was welcoming, someone showed her around - and then, she says, she pretty much got right to work.

Kaylie is clear about what the pathway did for her, and she says it better than we could.

"Investments and programs like this give us a head start in our early careers. Being hands-on and learning stuff that's going to help me in the real world - it's really important for my future."

She's a junior. She's already running the pastry station. Please watch the full video below to see Kaylie in action!