Doyle Dixon is the Food Education and Service Training (FEAST) teacher at Tracy High. Who enjoys cooking and loves working with students. He loves trying new restaurants and places to eat as well as to inspire students and teach them lessons that they will use throughout their lives.

What is one piece of advice that you would give to high school students? “One piece of advice I would give to high school students is that there is life after high school.”

What do you love most about your job? “The thing I love most about my job is showing students the world through culinary arts.”

What motivates you? “Getting high school students to put on successful events that encompass food and fun.”

What is your favorite restaurant or place to eat? “My favorite places to eat are Boulevard, French Laundry, Bottega, Acquerello, and Bouchon. The food there is fresh, innovative, comfortable, locally sourced, and creative. Items on the menu art not featured on most valley restaurant menus. I enjoy Italian, French, Thai, and California cuisine.”

What is the best advice you’ve ever received? “The best advice I’ve ever received is to never take yourself too seriously.”

What are your hobbies outside of school? “Some of my hobbies outside of school are traveling, gardening, and cooking at home.”

Where have you traveled before? What is your favorite dish to cook? “I have been to Italy, France, and Spain. New places I would like to visit are Portugal, Croatia, Eastern Europe, Sicily, Corsica, and North Africa. I have never been to those place, but I would like to see them. The food is great there.”

What do you love most about working with kids? “I love working with kids because high school students are hilarious sometimes, they just don’t know it.”

What do you remember most about high school? “St. Mary’s in Stockton in the late sixties, you can just imagine.”

What is the strangest job you’ve ever had? “The strangest job I ever had was probably hauling hay and working around chickens. I was about15 ½, 16 years old. I worked in east Stockton, Lodi, South of Stockton, and Linden. I would have to catch and haul chickens, rake chicken manure, cull dead chickens, buck hay onto a flatbed truck and haul to assorted fair grounds around the valley.”

What did you want to be when you grew up? “When I was younger I wanted to be the guy in the back of the fire truck that drove the tiller wheel.”

What is your least favorite part about being a teacher? “My least favorite part about teaching is uncooperative students, students who fail to take advantage of my ability to teach them life lessons, lazy students who do not take responsibility for their own learning and education. I am a teacher who is teaching as a third career. In essence, I have done other things in the real world and this is not my first and only job. I have much to offer the student who is receptive! ‘Those who do the work do the learning.”

When did you realize that you wanted to be a FEAST teacher? “It happened because the timing was right. Janet Hill retired from Tracy; the class lay fallow for a few years, and I took the reins.”

What is your best childhood memory? “Walking to the Genova bakery with my mother at the age of four and half. Buying a loaf of French bread warm from the stone ovens, rushing home with her, and spreading Roquefort cheese on a slice of that wonderful bread, and wolfing it down.”