What has been the focus of this Summer's Cooking Club? 

Having students develop leadership skills  and vocational skills has been a highlight of the summer. With this being our third summer, we continued to move more of the responsibilities on the students. The students have become part of the recipe publishing process and the grocery sort (which is one of the more challenging aspects of the process). Our summer teaching assistants each developed and presented their own recipes. Other students shared out during the ingredient challenges and open kitchen sessions. We have seen many kids adopt something they saw from a peer and make it in later weeks.  

How has the club adapted this summer?

The biggest change has been us actively encouraging students to embrace hurdles as just part of cooking. At least once in each video meet, a student had to create and implement a Plan B on the spot. Our students have become experts at googling ingredient substitutions online. Lots of critical thinking and creativity has happened as students needed a tool or piece of equipment they didn’t have. Adaptation became a big part of the game! 

Share one story of student success! Gabby was a founding member of Cooking Club and enjoyed cooking from the time she joined, but really found it frustrating when things didn’t go to plan for the first couple of years. This year (and especially this summer), Gabby was able to organize her station before joining the video meet and independently develop her plan B if she was missing an ingredient or a kitchen tool. She went from needing support each week to being self-sufficient and even being able to offer support and possible workarounds to peers. She has really grown in her flexibility and problem-solving skills, which she will be able to apply both inside and outside the kitchen. 

In other news, two warring siblings worked together successfully for practically the first time in their lives. Ms Barrow and their mom plotted to make them both join. They started out at separate stations and were positioned so that they could not see each other. By week three, they were working together off the same set of groceries. They still produced two results, but they did it together. 

How have our Summer Teaching Assistants displayed agency and growth through their summer jobs?

We handed over much of the process to the two teaching assistants, Ivan and Gabby. They were both very dependable and took the job seriously. They learned many important vocational and leadership skills. They learned to be on time, multi-task, critically think and be leaders amongst their peers. They were the key implementers of our fulfillment processes and helped shape the summer menu. The two STAs made grocery fulfillment and the publishing process much smoother and with higher quality than we had in the past. We watched them grow as they presented their recipes and helped students during cooking club.