Trafalgar Primary Cooking Up A Community

The School Breakfast Clubs Program – Cooking Classes provide a food literacy, cooking and nutrition education program, focused on bringing families together in the school environment to learn life-long healthy eating habits.   

The Cooking Class team recently had the pleasure of delivering Cooking Classes at Trafalgar Primary School. The program brings families together to learn life-long healthy eating habits and aims to provide a hands-on environment where families cook and enjoy a meal together.  

Cooking Classes provided an opportunity for the school to connect with different families within the school community, and for these families to create connections with each other. The team at the school found the fun and casual setting within the classes created the perfect environment to check in with the attending families, both for the school Principal and teachers alike. This helped to strengthen relationships between the staff, parents/carers and the students in a relaxed school context. 

Another added benefit of the Cooking Classes was the relationships that were created between the attending families. Community is so important to the school, and seeing new friendships spark up was an unexpected outcome.  

One grandparent carer attending the classes struggled to make social connections within the school community, until she attended the Cooking Classes. She met another carer, they chatted each week and planned to continue to catch up after the classes. A lovely outcome to create community!  

Who attended the Cooking Classes?

Student leaders in the group are given responsibility overseeing the food distribution, which is providing them with valuable organisational and communication skills. An unexpected benefit is that the students are also washing up their own dishes. The school has a bucket with warm water and a brush on a table, where the dishes are rinsed and placed into another bucket. A student helper stays at the table to make sure that the process is followed, and then puts the dishes into the dishwasher for a final clean.

While we were visiting the school, two students came into the Breakfast Club to ask if they could help. The Helper positions and badges are sought after. These positions are provided to students who have displayed good behaviour, and they are also used as an incentive for good behaviour.

Another change that has been introduced is the move from many small tables to sit at, to two long tables. This change encouraged different age groups to sit with each other and mingle, with great outcomes.

The team at Trafalgar Primary wanted to create a welcoming community within the Cooking Classes, so chose families that would benefit most from this. The families were chosen for a variety of reasons, including recent bereavements, financial hardships, children with learning and behavioural needs and students with past struggles at the school.   

What about those hampers! 

Each week the families take home a hamper full of fresh and staple food. This ensures they can practice the weekly recipes at home.  The families at the Trafalgar Primary Cooking Classes loved the generous hampers. Not only did they enable families to try new recipes at home, but it also helped to cut down their weekly grocery bills. 

The kids love trying something new

Each week the Cooking Classes whip up a different recipe, either pizza from scratch, fried rice, or rice paper rolls to name a few.  Young kids can be fussy eaters and wouldn’t try this new food at home.  But when the students make the food themselves and see other students eating it, they are more likely to try it too!   

One family, with four children all diagnosed with Autism, particularly loved the Cooking Classes. Their mother told the Cooking Classes team that food has been a real obstacle at home, where she struggles to get her kids to try new foods and feels like the family’s diet has not been as healthy due to their sensory issues with vegetables and other foods. 

She was absolutely delighted to see her two youngest children participating in the classes and trying something that they wouldn’t normally try, including the Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls, packed with colourful, crunchy vegetables.  

Positive impact on the community 

The success of the Foodbank Cooking Classes at Trafalgar Primary School demonstrates the positive impact of the community-focused program. The Classes not only provided practical cooking skills but also serve as a catalyst for building relationships, fostering social connections, and creating a supportive environment for families facing various challenges. The collaboration between the school, families, and Foodbank identifies the outcomes of the program for bringing about positive change and strengthen community bonds. 

Testimonials from Trafalgar Primary School

A participating parent shared, “Foodbank Cooking Classes have been awesome, and the recipes have been good! The kids are happy! We’ve already made the fried rice again at home. It’s making us want to cook more as a family.” 

From the school’s perspective, Jess Burns, the Breakfast Club Coordinator, remarked, “We loved hosting Foodbank Cooking classes at our school! Alanna and Jane did a marvellous job creating a warm and inviting environment for our families to connect with one another and learn some valuable lessons on nutrition and cooking.” 

Greater Shepparton Secondary College

In 2022, four local secondary colleges were merged into the new Greater Shepparton Secondary College. The College has 2,500 students attending from years seven to 12. The past two years have seen the school thrive, and the School Breakfast Clubs Program has been at the center of this success ensuring kids have the nutritional energy they need to learn every day.

How does a school provide a Breakfast Club to 2,500 kids every day? With a well planned and creative program!

A new school linking to local roots

Greater Shepparton Secondary College was built to include three identical main buildings known as neighbourhoods. The College and its neighbourhoods give Shepparton students new school facilities providing contemporary shared teaching, learning spaces and specialist areas.

The Local Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (LAECG), part of the Shepparton Education Plan’s Koorie Engagement Group, led the initiative to name the three neighbourhoods in Aboriginal language. After community consultation, three names, Biyala (River Red Gum), Dharnya (Grey Box), and Bayuna (Yellow Box), were endorsed as the official names symbolising the significance of trees in culture, education, and community gathering.

The selected names are connected to trees found along waterways in the local landscape and compare the neighbourhoods to branches and the students to leaves, emphasising the vital role of education and growth.

A Breakfast Club for the masses

Traditionally School Breakfast Clubs Programs are run in the morning before school, but expecting teenagers to get to school early can be a hard ask for most. After experimenting with different times, the team at the College landed on running their Breakfast Club during the first recess break of the day as well as in the mornings too.

Every day the bell rings at 11am, the kids are hungry and the team here are prepared. It was quickly realised that high school students don’t want to sit down to eat, they are in a hurry and want to spend time with their friends.

Each neighbourhood is equipped with a kitchen and community room. The community room in the Bayuna neighbourhood is where the Breakfast Club happens every day.

The team has a portable commercial trolley that is stacked with the School Breakfast Clubs Program food. The trolley is set up and rolled to an external door. The kids line up and before you know it there are polite hands reaching in for apples, oranges, pears, fruit cups, Messy Monkeys, vegemite sandwiches and, with help from another organisation, they have cheese sandwiches too. The team also offer the tuna meals and lentil bowls for the kids to take for their lunch break.

During the 20 minute recess break, 80-100 kids receive essential food. The grab and go style of service provides the ease of access for every student, and it reduces the stigma that a teenager can feel about accessing food relief.

Given the size of the school, it is hard to get food to every student. To help manage this, School Breakfast Clubs Program snacks are left in communal areas of each Neighbourhood. This ensures students have access to food when and where they need it, in an easily accessible way.

Testimonials

“The Breakfast Program is integral in assisting our students to be “ready to learn”. It supports our acknowledgement that there is a strong connection between student wellbeing and academic outcomes. The program runs out of our Community Hub every morning before school and again during first break. A warm welcome given by the staff who run the program combined with a variety of nourishing foods makes sure that every student in our College starts the school day positively.”

Karen Utber | Assistant Principal

“We (the school) love being able to supply our students with some breakfast to start their day and then be able to supply them with something at recess to get them through the rest of the day. The program is a very welcomed part of our student’s day and the variety of items is great. Thank you for allowing us to do this.”

Linda | Breakfast Club Coordinator

Thoughts from an old student

“I remember a time when there was no breakfast club program. Some days I would go to the library to read, just so other kids didn’t realise that I didn’t have lunch when they were eating. Because of the Breaky Club, even when I have forgotten my lunch or I have lunch, and feel like I need a little more, I know that with a smile and a please and thank you, I won’t go hungry.”

Patrick Challis | Now a Science/Math Teacher

Lyndhurst Secondary College

Lyndhurst Secondary College is a busy secondary college with 722 students, located in the suburb of Cranbourne in the outer southeast suburbs of Melbourne.   

The school focuses on empowering students for learning and life. With this in mind, when they were offered the opportunity to host the School Breakfast Clubs Program Cooking Classes, they grabbed that opportunity with confidence. 

The College invited students and their primary carers to attend the four week program, once a week. The Foodbank Victoria team came along with the equipment and ingredients, and the rest was up to the participants to get cooking. 

The food is great

One major benefit that the Lyndhurst Secondary College students found was learning how to cook simple meals, like pizza from scratch and rice paper rolls.  

Often these students don’t cook at home or like to try new foods. These classes taught them basic cooking skills for life, and when they made the food, they wanted to eat the food too. Trying new foods was good in the end! 

It’s the social life

Schools report that there is so much more to these Cooking Classes than the fabulous cooking skills the kids learn. Often the social side of things shines through.  

One of the participants brought their Primary Carer along, their grandparent. The grandparent was thrilled to have an opportunity to spend some bonding time with her grandchild, and to get some help with cooking in the evenings at home too.  

Another student came along with their Primary Carer who was a Government Mentor. The mentor liked the benefit of spending time with their student, and also getting to know the school staff better. 

Food hampers were essential

Each week the groups attending receive a full box of food, valued at $55 per box. These recipe boxes are filled with fresh ingredients (fruit, vegetables and herbs) as well as culturally diverse dry goods such as rice, olive oil, spices, noodles, nori and pita breads. 

Participants are encouraged to use the food to cook the recipes that they are learning in the classes.  

The families at Lyndhurst Secondary College found these hampers an incentive to attend the classes each week, and they also found that they provided enormous relief to their food shopping bills at the supermarkets.  

They would use the food to try the recipes, but also to add to their normal cooking ideas too. 

Testimonials from Lyndhurst Secondary College

“The impact of this program on our school community is so much more than feeding families and ensuring everyone has a full belly at school and at home.

This program has enabled us to establish and foster positive working partnerships between school and home. It has enabled students and their parents and carers to find common interests through cooking and instilling a culture where time between family members is shared and valued.

For us as a college, one of the greatest benefits was being able to see students continue their learning alongside their parent/carer/significant adult and to hear that this continues at home with new routines of cooking and enjoying a meal together.

Undoubtedly, this has also benefitted student engagement with school, connection to school and parent/carer involvement and trust with our college. We believe the work Foodbank has done with our college will have long term positive impact on the students and families involved both academically and socially.”

Eloise Haynes | Lyndhurst Secondary College Principal

“I like cooking and I enjoyed eating the food after because it was yum. The staff there were very nice.

We got to bring home big boxes of food to cook at home. This meant that we were able to cook different meals together and eat together as a family.

I would 100% go back and do this program again.”

Abbie W | Year 7 Student