KLCC continues to honor educators this year with Inspiring Minds: Spotlighting Inspiration in Education. In this installment, we meet Patrick Clarke, the Oregon Small Schools Association’s 2025 Teacher of the Year.
Clarke is the Culinary Director for Siletz Valley School in Lincoln County. This award came as a surprise to him, especially given that he never expected to be an educator.
“I honestly never really had a desire to be a teacher, nor did I ever think I would be in the education system. I had a tough time throughout high school, with grades and just keeping myself out of trouble in general," said Clarke. “So I never thought this was going to be a place that I would end back up in and apparently do a really good job while I'm here. So yeah, I’m really enjoying it.”
Clarke fell in love with culinary arts during his time in the Army. That led him to work for vineyards and fine dining establishments. He even started up a gourmet food truck event company, the Food Truck Mafia.
After nearly 20 years in the restaurant industry, he only came to teaching culinary skills in the classroom two years ago. Clarke noticed there was a lack of people coming into the field, and those that did, often had the wrong mindset.
“They more had a Gordon Ramsay mentality, more so than what truly happens in the kitchens, which is more of a caring and nurturing and a level of service that you provide to people,” Clarke told KLCC. “It's not really about your ego and yelling at people. They asked the students what kind of a career and technical education class that they would like to have available to them, and the top answer was culinary. So, I started from scratch.”
Clarke set out to build a culinary program that instills values, while providing an emphasis on real-world, transferable skills. He wanted to show students the possibilities for careers in the food industry, from working in fisheries to being a chef.
With Siletz Valley School being a majority tribal school, he wanted to work closely with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. So while he teaches traditional cooking techniques from around the world, his program emphasizes cultural methods. This is most apparent in his Bountiful Oregon class.
“That is about everything that is harvestable from the land and the sea. The flora and fauna that surrounds us, especially here on the coast, there's lots of wild mushrooms and plants and fish and crab and elk and deer and all these things that you can gather from the wild,” said Clarke.
Clarke’s students also participate in the High School Seafood Butchery program for the Oregon Ocean Cluster Initiative. The program provides the seafood each week, and Clarke takes it from there.
“This past week we got whole Dungeness crab and pink shrimp. So we talked about the crab, the anatomy, harvest times, how much it really means to the Oregon economy. I'll talk to them about the jobs that directly are implied within that specific fishery and as we move through other fisheries, I'll talk about the other jobs that are available specifically within those fields.
And then we cook them. So yesterday we made crab gumbo, we did fried shrimp dumpling, and we made shrimp salad and we made crab cakes, and then next week we'll be getting black cod.
So I'll take black cod, and I'll show them how to butcher the black cod from a full fish. We'll fillet it and we'll do the same process. We'll do this through every single kind of seafood that is commercially available within the state of Oregon.”
In keeping with traditional Indigenous methods, no part of the fish is unused. The carcasses are taken to a Tribal-run garden where they are put back to the land to be used as fertilizer.
Clarke said the seafood program helps showcase the entire industry.
“Out here in Siletz, we're only 20 minutes from Newport, but a lot of the students here, their family already works for the fishery,” said Clarke. “And then for those that don't have any family that's initiated into that, it's good to show them all those jobs, so that they understand that they can make a career out of working on the boats or in the processing plants or in a restaurant or seafood delivery. There's so many different things that touch on all of that.”
Potential careers
For students who might be geared more towards broader careers in the restaurant industry, Clarke has a culinary team, made up of students who have been through his tiered classes. They travel to restaurants, meeting chefs, walking into kitchens and getting more exposure to people doing the work. Earlier this week, he and the culinary team took the school’s food trailer—another brainchild of Clarke’s—to the Oregon Governor's Conference on Tourism.
At the end of the month, Clarke will be taking some of his students to a national competition in Florida to compete against other schools from around the country.
Students also have the opportunity to provide food for ceremonies with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.
“We've done traditional salmon smoking. We have prepared ceremonial meals for events that the tribe holds year-round,” said Clarke. “Whether that be a Powwow, and that's when everybody comes together, and we have the drums and the dancers, and there's a big sense of community. We'll do food for everybody for that.”
Clarke said students look forward to his class, and he considers it a nice break from the more formal academic pressures they get in other classes.
Given that Clarke shared how he might not have been the best student in his own high school years, we asked him what this kind of program would have meant to him back then.
“Oh, I would have taken my class every year that I could have, for sure. I actually didn't know I would love cooking as much as I did before I joined the military, and maybe that's what my program could have showed me earlier on,” responded Clarke. "Having a program like mine when I went to high school would have definitely enhanced where I am at technically. It would have given me years of advancement. I would have loved my program. I would have loved to come there every single day.”
Clarke said he is humbled by this award, especially given how new he is to education. He acknowledged that he looks up to the teachers that bring so much experience to their classrooms at Siletz Valley School. He said the admiration he feels for the efforts they put into their own work makes this honor even more meaningful to him.
Clarke will officially receive his Teacher of the Year award at the OSSA’s Spring conference at the Salishan Resort on Friday.
