For a few minutes at least, the kitchen at Bothell High resembles a TV reality show.

Dressed in bright white smocks, students rush with dishes and utensils in their hands. They don’t say much except, “Yes, Chef” or “No, Chef.”

Director of Bothell High’s culinary-arts program, Joann Bushnell admits there is a bit of tension in the room. But that’s OK, she adds, stating that’s the way it should be. A professional kitchen can be a bit of a pressure cooker and the assistant, or sous chefs, have to learn to take orders from the executive chef.

“You have to be on your toes,” Bushnell said, “that’s all part of it.”

Under the direction of visiting chef Skyler Gemar, the five students on hand on this particular afternoon are going through a sort of “Iron Chef” exercise, trying to put together several dishes in an hour. They were preparing for a competition last Sunday in Olympia, sponsored by the Washington State Restaurant Association. Bothell placed fourth in the team competition.

Coming from all around the Northshore School District, the four student competitors and one alternate actually were chosen by way of an “Iron Chef”-style competition, according to Gemar, who is executive chef of the Golf Club at Echo Falls. Gemar said their task for that contest was to prepare a main course, just about any way they wanted, around a boneless chicken breast.

“I love cooking,” said Matt Walph, 17, of Bothell High, explaining his presence behind a bank of stove-top burners. For the competition, Matt was to do most of the actual cooking, while others prepared the dishes and plated them.

“I grew up in the kitchen,” Matt continued. “It just kind of came naturally to me to get into it.”

Homeschooled Samantha Levell, 17, has a similar explanation of why she is in the school kitchen working hard.

“I grew up cooking dinner for my family,” she said. “I just fell in love with it.”

For the competition, Gemar prepared a menu featuring several dishes, including a main course of fennel-covered lamb chops served with couscous and green beans and other courses consisting of spiced sea scallops and a chocolate and raspberry crepe dessert.

During this particular practice, Gemar notes the students didn’t beat the one-hour time limit. Still, he wants perfection in the plating as the dishes prepared this day will be photographed for the competition.

Stating that he just likes working with the students, Gemar added he often takes a different approach than some chefs might take when teaching.

“It’s not all about, you do this and you do that,” he said.

According to Gemar, he wants his students to figure out the reason they are doing this or doing that. When a dish is finished, he always asks the student chef if it is properly seasoned. Only then does he tell them if they are correct or not.

At the start of this school year, the culinary-arts program received what Bushnell called a big boost in the form of a newly remodeled kitchen to use as a classroom.

“We really modeled it after that at the Art Institute of Seattle,” Bushnell said.

The culinary-arts students generally don’t cook for other students, but they do a lot of catering projects, including a football banquet for 300 people. They also did 260 boxed lunches for a teacher’s assistant group.

According to Bushnell, Gemar is only one of numerous guest chefs who each come to the program for about a month.

As for Bushnell herself, she received a degree in home economics “way back when,” she said, and started her career in hospital food service. Eventually, she spent 10 years visiting school kitchens before deciding she really wanted to get into teaching herself. She has been with the Bothell High program now for six years.

“I like it,” she said. “And everybody gets to have fun doing it.”