Under dainty white fairy lights draped between basketball hoops and the watchful eye of the Frank Wagner Elementary School wildcat, sit 12 round tables, clothed in white linen and tastefully decorated with centerpieces of white carnations and yellow roses. In the background, soft jazz plays.
Bustling with steady speed and intensity are 21 students from Darcie Smith’s fourth-grade class. They are setting tables, placing name cards and positioning votive candles.
The students are expecting 100 guests, most of them parents, to arrive at 6 p.m. promptly for a five-course dinner that the students have chosen, helped to make and will serve. This is the Dinner Party Project and theirs is the first class in Washington to be selected for it.
"We’ve been planning since the middle of March," Smith said.
The project is a five-week food education program that guides teachers and students through the process of working with each other and the community to put together a formal dinner party.
"It’s been wonderful," Miriam Ahearn, the school nurse, said. "We are so fortunate to be able to get to do something like this."
Ahearn talked to Smith about the project after receiving a newspaper clipping about it from Gill Puntenney, another member of the staff at the Monroe school.
Ahearn applied to the program and after a few weeks, Smith’s class was accepted.
Armed with an $800 grant and a $1,500 stipend, Smith and her students set out to find a chef and volunteers in the community. The chef they approached was Jim Taranto, owner of Nana Carmela’s Ristorante at the Monroe golf course.
"It’s been touching to see 10-year-old children so excited about learning about the importance of family, nutrition," Taranto said.
Students visited Taranto at his restaurant twice. They learned how to put together a menu and to lay a table for a formal five-course meal, and chose what to serve at their party.
Students learned the importance of good grooming. Many furrowed brows were turned intently to Woodinville firefighter Greg Ahearn as he instructed the boys how to properly measure the length of a tie and to make a good size knot.
"It’s like tying your shoes for the first time," said 10-year-old Kyle Johns.
While the boys were learning to tie their ties, school counselor Lynnette Ervin was showing the girls how to take care of their nails. The day before the girls had soaked their nails in Palmolive and pushed back their cuticles. Once filed and buffed, their nails were painted with slow precision. They talked about make up and hair and what was appropriate for a dinner party.
"You know what my rule about mascara is?" Ervin said. "Clear mascara" is dinner party appropriate as is clear lip gloss.
One week later and with nary a red lip in sight, boys and girls weaved through the tables looking like pint-sized chefs in their new white coats, a gift from Taranto, their names embroidered on each one. Suddenly someone checked the time.
"It’s 5:37," a panicked voice cried out. Time to change into dinner party attire.
"No, it’s only 5:36."
Still time for more arranging.
Once all places were set, students changed into shirts and ties and semi-formal wear in time to escort their guests to their seats.
Boys flipped napkins out of glasses and poured water for their guests. They took the breadbasket around their tables offering the contents to diners, who listened to "They Can’t Take That Away From Me" from the Greg Schroeder Trio.
When one of the tables dropped to one side and plates and cutlery went sliding to the floor, a swarm of volunteer helpers took care of things so swiftly that no one paid much attention at all.
The guests at the fallen table were expertly guided to an extra spot already set up, and they began their antipasto salad and poured from carafes of grape juice.
A line of students, most with perfectly manicured nails, lined the kitchen counter to carry plates of salad to their tables. Others stacked empty plates at the table and carefully made their way past their guests to the kitchen.
"Oh cheesecake, they’re serving the cheesecake," shouted boys as they thundered across the gym floor, boutonnieres pinned to their shirts.
But, no, it was the chicken dish.
"Garnish Queen" Samantha Scace, 9, found her job —sprinkling cheese on the manicotti before plates went out of the kitchen — fun but fast paced.
"It was kinda hard to keep up," Samantha said.
As well as dining etiquette, students now know the correct way to ask to be excused from the table. Diners at a formal dinner don’t just get up and go to the bathroom, said 9-year-old Gabe Keymolen.
"You get up and say quietly, ‘One moment please,’ " Gabe said.
Throughout the evening students were encouraged to put the fox trot to the test. It was the one dance they had learned and the one thing the boys had been most fearful of asking the girls to participate in.
"You can’t say, ‘Yo, yo, wanna dance?’" Kyle said.
"I’ve been learning how to fox trot in the kitchen," guest Susan Caluya said.
Her daughter, 10-year-old Caitlyn, was her instructor.
Caluya, and her husband, Tim Caluya, thought the dinner party was a great way for parents to meet each other. This is especially true because fourth-graders are getting to an age where they just want to be dropped off at school and rid of their parents as soon as possible, Tim Caluya said.
The family and community aspects of the project struck a chord with Caluya who was born and raised in Hawaii. He was looking forward to seeing other parents and their children at this "happy time."
"This is like extended family," Caluya said. "You never really get to see people like this."
Dinner party toasts were given at the beginning of the evening by the excited, well turned out and well prepared fourth-graders.
They lined up to thank the James Beard Foundation and the American Institute of Wine and Food, New York Chapter, and many others for their contributions. Their guests raised their champagne flutes filled with sparkling apple juice in agreement and politely clapped.
The students also wanted to make sure their teacher was honored the way she deserved.
"Thank you, Miss Smith, for a good education," Caitlyn Caluya said into the microphone. "And helping with this Dinner Party Project. Cheers!"
Reporter Christina Harper: 425-339-3491 or harper@heraldnet.com.
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