Roseville Joint Union High School District has certain graduation requirements in order to graduate. One of the graduation requirements needed to fulfill is a Visual and Performing Arts class. Students are required to take one class in order to graduate.

Of the visual and performing art classes, the list includes guitar, piano, dance, ceramics, AP Art History, photography and art. One class that is not a VAPA but falls into the category is culinary.
Roseville High School‘s culinary needs to be seen as a VAPA. RHS culinary is the perfect definition of a VAPA.

Cooking is literally performing by cooking different meals in front of judges and is one hundred percent done visually. I just don’t see why this class is not a VAPA.
Not only should cooking be a VAPA, but by making this class a VAPA, more students will want to participate in it. It doesn’t lack enrollment, but more students should want to take such a practical and beneficial course,

Students are forced to decide what VAPA they will take from not an exactly wide variety of classes.

When I had to decide what VAPA to take, I chose AP Art History because it was the only AP VAPA and the other choices were uncommon.

Adding cooking to the VAPA list will only help students with their selection and create a more diverse list. If a student has an interest for cooking, we shouldn’t make them take art to graduate
Culinary deserves to be considered a vapa because it fits more under the category than any of the other classes. If culinary is offered as a VAPA, more students will take cooking and benefit from it more than any other class.

Culinary has some of the very same characteristics than all of the other VAPA classes.

Culinary has more than one class so students can continue. Culinary also has tests and is graded on their performances which is exactly what the other Vapa courses have.

If anything, culinary is a much more useful class than many of the others because learning how to cook is a better life skill than learning how to draw. Cooking is a unique skill and the students who decide to take it deserve to have their VAPA fulfilled.

VAPA courses offer students an outlet for creative development and expression that academic courses otherwise don’t, and the role of creativity in cooking is no different than in some other VAPAs.

In dance, students follow a routine; in guitar, students follow a note sheet; in cooking, students follow a recipe. Is there a difference?

But like these VAPAs, it’s practicing techniques, like slicing, peeling and chopping that turns the ingredients and recipe into a product.

The creation process from start to finish holds both visual and performance values, and in my eyes, elevates culinary from an instructional course to a craft.

Learning how to cook is a life skill that everyone should learn, so having culinary not count as a VAPA is outrageous.

The students who put their time and effort into culinary need to be credited as a VAPA because they are doing the same work as other students who are receiving VAPA credit.