‘Nobis Hospitalitas Cordi Est’ & ‘Non Scholae Sed Vitae Discimus’
Have you ever been wondering what this means, and do you fancy hands-on experience as well as academic training? – If your answer is yes, the writers of this article can highly recommend this module to future year 6 and year 7 students.
The elective module ‘English and Hospitality’ will show you how humanistic hospitality can be put into practice today. In real-life training restaurants, you will learn hands-on about restaurant service as well as hotel reception skills, gaining the basic qualification needed for a paid summer job.
In February 2021, the first AkadGym students successfully completed the first run of the elective module with a theoretical and practical final examination. The module was a joint project of the Akademisches Gymnasium Salzburg, restaurant ‘Gasthaus zu Schloss Hellbrunn’ of Gassner Gastronomie, our school’s Parents’ Association, Segafredo Zanetti Austria, and St Josef School Salzburg.
With English being the language of instruction and drawing upon our school’s humanistic ethos, you can additionally practise and improve your English throughout the module. Also, you will pick up fine dining etiquette and manners as you go along.
Students and teachers work as a team to make the module a mind-blowing experience. You can look forward to being team-taught by Mr Birenti, a fully qualified practical skills lecturer fluent in four languages with an international career as certified hotelier and restaurant manager, and language teacher Mr Lutsch. Working on real-life tasks, you will immerse yourself in the world of hospitality.
We mixed cocktails and performed professional food, drinks, and wine service. We brewed perfectly balanced espressos and frothy cappuccinos and got ourselves a barista diploma. We also had the opportunity to build up contacts and make new friends on the way.
A Hospitality Language Week in London, which due to Covid-19 was replaced by a virtual live online visit to Jerusalem, is just another bonus. After the module, you can apply for an internship or a summer job to many companies and co-operations partners in Austria and abroad. The Austrian Hospice Hotel in Jerusalem even offers boys the option to do their civil service (Auslandszivildienst) there.
In addition to the module grade in the school report, we got a Certificate of Completion listing our skills, and a Segafredo Barista Diploma. These documents will come in handy when applying for a future summer job or internship and help make our curriculum vitae interesting and stand out.
We can assure you that all the hard work in this module pays off and that it offers you so much in return. Besides the fun and adventure of the working-world, you can enjoy benefits, such as excursions and getting yourself a and reference for a memorable curriculum vitae. For in this module, ‘Hospitality is at our very core’, as St Hironymus so aptly puts it, and ‘we do not learn for school, but for life,’ as we all know from Seneca.
Melanie Osama (6b), Raphael Miehsler, Carla Oblasser, Matthias Strobl, Maximilian Taxer (6a)
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Our photo video ‘Table d’Hôte and Banquet Service’ @stjosef:
Bilder und Bildbeschriftungen (all photos by C Lutsch):
