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Alps View's newest project, Dragon Cafe, adds to our multi-pronged approach to meeting the many challenging social, emotional, and physical needs of our students and we hope to secure enough grant funding to see it through.
The idea for Dragon Cafe stemmed from our students' high desire to increase their cooking skills, and a strong yearning to eat healthier foods. For example, some of the students brought from home all of the ingredients and equipment needed to make bear burgers. Yes, bear burgers! They ground the bear meat in class and grilled the burgers on our BBQ. They fed sixteen students that day, most of whom had never had bear meat before, and made one of the best burgers I have ever had. Additionally, our students have started chopping and freezing the fruit from their lunches to later be combined with milk and yogurt, also from their school lunches, so they can experiment with making delicious smoothies for the class. Their creativity without the proper equipment astounds me and I can't wait to see what they will create given the right cooking equipment and ingredients.
The mission of Dragon Cafe is to create hands-on learning opportunities for our students, provide essential cooking skills utilizing fresh and healthy foods, increase our students' knowledge, skills, and interest when it comes to healthy living and cooking, and strengthen our community and parent/guardian engagement while we utilize them as guest chefs. We will do this by creating a Cafe that:
is a functional cooking area and provides all the necessary cooking equipment for several methods of cooking
utilizes members of our community and incorporates student parents/guardians as guest chefs
incorporates lessons and fresh food, in and from the garden, and produces a positive outcome for the student frustrated with traditional desk/seat work
strengthens teamwork amongst classmates and continues to build upon our family atmosphere
offers our students hands-on interaction with healthy eating, self-sufficiency
exposes students to the many joys of cooking and the potential for a career pathway
exposes students to all manner of new foods and culinary exploration
provides credit toward student elective requirements
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