Marc My Words: What Can We Learn from Bartender School?

Earlierthis summer, my son graduated from bartender school. Not a career, heassures me, but a way to bring in the cash a college-age kid alwaysneeds. So I said okay (besides, I directly benefited from hishomework assignments, if you know what I mean). Just to be curious, Ilooked at what he was doing in this week-long class, and how he waslearning.

First– thelocation. Not a real bar, but a simulated bar, right down to the loudmusic, dark lighting, rickety bar stools, and real brand-label liquorbottles (filled with colored water). “So where’s the classroom,”I asked. “Surely you must have a place where you give lecturesabout how to make drinks, punctuated with slides and perhaps somecool videos, right?” “Nope,” the instructor replied. “The baris the classroom; we do everything here.” Not a computer (exceptfor the simulated cash register), or a projector, or a DVD player, oran Internet connection in sight. Total immersion in the simulatedenvironment – impressive!

Butif there are no copies of slides, what else could possibly be in the“student guide?” Answer: the student guide is primarily a set ofdrink recipes that students complete in class. Some information isprovided and some they add as they go along. Minimal spoon-feeding. Iwon’t get into how concerned I was that there are no instructionalobjectives. Okay, not concerned at all; somehow all the students knowexactly why they are there and what they are going to learn. I thinkit has something to do with motivation.

Froma Martini to a Tom Collins to a Long Island Ice Tea; there must be100 different drinks in the student guide. How can they learn themall? Memorizing the ingredients for the most popular drinks isimportant, I learned, so the course uses memory aids. For example,the memory aid for a Bay Breeze is “Very Cool Place” (Vodka,Cranberry, Pineapple). You get the idea. But in case their memoryfails them, each night the students create note cards for each drink,according to a template. By the end of the course, they have theirown bartending job aid.

Andthen there’s practice – lotsof it.

Apparently,mixing drinks correctly is only half the job. Since time is money,making them fast is the other half. So each day, and usually morethan once a day, the students are asked to make several drinks in aspecified amount of time. Speed and correctness are both importantand students make the drinks for each other, and for the instructor.They don’t know in advance what they will be asked to prepare, and,every once in a while, a drink can be sent back to be done over.Actual practice under realistic conditions; imagine that!

Nowfor the final exam: no “six-item multiple-choice quiz and thenyou’re done” here. Yes, there’s a written test on the legal andcommon sense issues of bartending, with a pretty high cutoff score,but the real test is performance-based. The students must make atleast twelve drinks correctly in seven minutes. Don’t succeed? Okay, try again, but the drinks may be different the next time. Theevaluation is criterion-referenced: a demonstration-based performanceassessment for would-be bartenders. What a concept.

Here,in this little bartending school, we have high-level simulations, aninteractive student guide and student-created job aids, simple andfun memory aids, substantial realistic practice, and acompetency-based assessment. So I’m thinking, there must be aninstructional designer behind all of this. “Can I meet yourinstructional designer?” I asked. “What’s an instructionaldesigner?” was the response. I explained, but was quicklyinterrupted. “We don’t have anyone like that,” she replied. “Wejust have lots of experience in what works, students who really wantto learn, and me – totally into teaching what I know.”

Amen.