IMPACT PD
Professional Development Built for the FCS Culinary Educator
Sharpen Your Skills
Build kitchen confidence with professional techniques you can bring directly into your classroom - from a chef who's done both.
Find Your Calm
Practical tools for your everyday life. In your home, in your car, in your classroom. Simple shifts that make a difference.
Inspire Students
The most powerful thing in your classroom isn't the curriculum.
It's you.
Champion Your Program
These classes are designed to give you the tools, the language, and the confidence to re-energize your teaching and make your program in demand.
IMPACT
Inspiration. Mentorship. Purpose. Advocacy. Community. Transformation.
The Learning Policy Institute reviewed 35 rigorous studies of teacher professional development (Darling-Hammond, Hyler & Gardner, 2017) and identified seven characteristics that consistently appear in PD that actually changes practice and improves student outcomes. Effective PD is content-focused, built around active learning, collaborative, grounded in models of effective practice, supported by coaching and expertise, structured around feedback and reflection, and sustained over time.
IMPACT PD is built on all seven.
Research published in the Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences documents what most FCS culinary educators already know: this work is different. FCS teachers engage students in the subject matter while simultaneously paying attention to the student's well-being - a dual role that puts them at higher risk of compassion fatigue and burnout than most of their colleagues.
IMPACT PD was built knowing that.
The research is consistent: when teachers participate in sustained, content-focused professional development, their students do better. The most widely cited federal review of PD research (Yoon et al., 2007) found that teachers who received sustained PD - not one-off workshops - saw measurable gains in their students' achievement. Later reviews, including the Learning Policy Institute's 2017 synthesis, have reinforced this finding across subjects and grade levels.
The students in your classroom will feel the difference. So will you.
Meet Melanie
Melanie Underwood knows what it means to keep a classroom engaged, manage a kitchen that isn't cooperating, and find calm in the middle of chaos. The techniques she brings to teachers aren't theory - they're what she uses herself. Her work integrates culinary skill, practical teaching strategy, and mindfulness.
Because the most powerful thing in your classroom isn't the curriculum. It's you.
She has spent 30 years on both sides of what you do - professional kitchens and classrooms. She worked at the Plaza Hotel and Four Seasons Hotel before spending 24 years on faculty at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan. She taught high school culinary and baking and pastry, and ran the CTE student-run restaurant. She serves on a Perkins Stakeholder Committee, is a certified mindfulness instructor, for adults and children, a published cookbook author, and has taught over 50,000 students.
Nine months. Nine themes. Standards-aligned curriculum, live instruction, and the professional community you and your classroom deserve.
IMPACT PD is a nine-month professional development program designed exclusively for FCS culinary educators.
September through May, members receive:
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75-minute live virtual session per month, recorded for members to replay
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Two complete standards-aligned lesson plans aligned to National FCS Standards and the Common Career Technical Core
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Every lesson plan includes a Conversation Activator bell ringer, demonstrated recipe, vocabulary, learning touchpoints, and formative and summative tools - ready to teach
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Access to a growing resource library of ready-to-use curriculum
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Free enrollment in the Meditation Lab
Each month is anchored to a theme - Curiosity, Conversation, Creativity, Confidence, Calm, Compassion, Connection, Community, and Celebration - and delivered through culinary skill and classroom strategy.
Available for individual educators and district. Starts September 2026.
If you're navigating the district funding processes, reach out and we'll work with your timeline.
Individual Educator: $350
District Funded: $950
We know many teachers fund their professional development. The individual rate reflects that.
Questions about pricing or how to enroll? Reach out directly.
Beginning September 2026
What People Are Saying
Melanie’s PD was more than I expected. I thought it would be a simple team-building session, but it became a meaningful bonding experience for our staff. Teachers walked away with practical tools they could use immediately and felt invigorated by the experience.
M.F.
Our FCS department brought Melanie in for a custom class. She built it around exactly what we needed and every one of us left teaching differently.
K.W.
I had the chance to be trained by Melanie and it made a world of difference for me. I was a child development teacher that was asked to teach culinary. She brought me through my imposter syndrome and into my confident culinary teacher era.
J.D.
We took a PD called "Flip the Script" and it did exactly what it said. I walked back into my classroom Monday morning with a completely different approach.
L.B.