As a young girl Sara Monson was a devoted fan of TV cooking shows. She’d tune in to episodes of Julia Child’s “The French Chef” and Justin Wilson’s “Louisiana Cookin’,” and when the segments would end, she’d re-create the kitchen studio setup at home. She’d assemble pots and pans and cook make-believe dishes before her own live studio audience: a beloved family dog that would sit quietly and dutifully pay attention to her show.

Monson’s early love of cooking instruction prepared her for the role in which she is much celebrated today. As a teacher at Asheville High School, she oversees the popular culinary arts and hospitality management courses, offered through the school’s career and technical education program, or CTE. They are the most sought-after CTE courses offered at the school.

Each year, Monson introduces cooking skills to well over 100 students, oversees the school’s student-led Groundhogs Café restaurant and prepares a promising batch of young chefs for state and national competitions run by the National Restaurant Association.

“To be honest, I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” says Monson, who was awarded CTE Teacher of the Year by Asheville City Schools in 2023. “I really do love what I do.”

ACS culinary teacher Sara Monson in her classroom.

A native of Western North Carolina, Monson graduated from A.C. Reynolds High School in 1992 and then went to Appalachian State University to study commercial recreation and tourism management. When she moved back to Asheville in 2000 to help care for a family member, she found herself seeking a more solid career direction and leaned heavily on her years of working in bars and restaurants while in school.

“I knew I had to find something to do,” she says. “I’d always loved cooking and I knew A-B Tech had this really great program.”

Monson enrolled in A-B Tech’s culinary school that same year, learning all of the knife skills and cooking techniques she needed to thrive in a kitchen. But she also learned the value of time management, an often-overlooked skill in a profession where minutes and sometimes even seconds matter.

“Chef Sheila Tillman [former associate dean of the A-B Tech culinary team] would always tell us to ‘move with a sense of urgency.’ It can be applied to life, I guess, and I now have that phrase hanging up in my classroom.”

After graduating from A-B Tech in 2002, Monson accepted a job at Mission Hospital, preparing food for patients and doctors. For breakfast, she’d cook 60 gallons of scrambled eggs at a time using equipment developed by the U.S. military, and then quickly move to the equally high demands of a lunch service. After that, she accepted a job as sous chef at Balsam Mountain Preserve, a private gated community in Jackson County, where the attention shifted to quality over quantity.

“They were total opposites, but I learned food and nutrition is important for everyone,” Monson says.

By 2005, she’d heard about an opening at Asheville Middle School, and discovered that her culinary degree was enough to get her foot in the door. She taught a class known formally as family and consumer sciences—more commonly known to earlier generations as “home ec”—and did well in the job for over a decade. In 2019, she moved to Asheville High School to oversee the program she teaches today.

A key part of her job is overseeing the student-run Groundhogs Café, which primarily serves breakfast to staff and faculty and where students cut their teeth in a working commercial kitchen. The signature “Original Groundhogs” favorite—also known as the OG—is a scratch-made biscuit with bacon, egg and cheese, using a recipe handed down from Monson’s grandmother. The Groundhogs student chefs also catered the senior prom in 2024, serving up a beautiful spread of mini BLTs, cucumber and dill tea sandwiches, scratch-made sausage rolls and fresh-baked cupcakes.

The 2023–24 school year was the first time Monson was able to offer a fourth-level course in culinary arts and hospitality management, which means students can now take one of her classes each year they’re a student at Asheville High—and become quite prepared to continue their culinary studies after high school.

“I have a few different kids going to A-B Tech next year,” Monson says. “Watching them all, and watching them succeed, just makes my heart happy.”