Fifteen year-old Aivan Apan is used to cooking for his family but he’s about to take his passion for experimenting in the kitchen to a whole new level.

Apan is heading to the northern qualifier of the Skills Ontario competition this coming weekend in North Bay at Canadore College.

The menu is pre-set and is comprised of minestrone soup to start, followed by a pan seared beef top sirloin cap steak, milk boiled garlic mashed potatoes and a combination of roasted root vegetables such as parsnip and bell peppers. It would not be complete without something sweet – a lemon tart meringue.

Apan took Foods class last year and enjoys watching cooking shows so the competition seemed like the perfect fit. He says he sacrificed part of his March break to cook and even came in this week on a snow day when buses were cancelled to practice one last time.

He says his parents are cheering him on and excited to see where he ends up in the competition.

Apan’s mentor and Foods teacher Mike Sipos says “cooking is straight forward but you have got to nail it in competition. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Know your movements.”

He says the same student can be entered two years in a row and seeing as this is his first time at the competition, he feels this is an opportunity to watch, listen and learn.

Students are scored on sanitation, presentation, taste, menu components, prep work and organization. The top 3 winners will move onto Skills Ontario in Toronto.

There are two more students from St. Benedict who are also attending the Skills competition in the area of carpentry under the direction of Mr. John Doyon.

Chemistry (elements, compounds, and atoms) can often be a tricky concept but not when you have jube jubes to help you along. Students in grade 9 Science at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School have been using the sweet stuff to demonstrate chemical bonding.

Grade 9 Science teachers Ms. Loretta Cuda and Ms. Tessa Jewell feel that the learning has become more solidified and that bringing manipulatives into the science classroom reinforces and allows students the opportunity to visualize and understand concepts.

The two teachers have started a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) club at the school. So far this year, the STEM students have looked at environmental projects in the Sudbury area as well as competed in the PEO bridge building competition held at Dynamic Earth.

Upcoming events include the Living Wall competition presented by Clean Air Sudbury, Science North, and supported by Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations. In addition, students will be building and testing catapults, roller-coaster, lunar landers, and Tomatosphere in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency, HeinzSeeds, Let’s Talk Science, and the University of Guelph, just to name a few.