Thank You To Our Adopt-A-Classroom Supporters!

Each year, generous families and businesses donate to adopt a Growing Chefs classroom. These funds support the edible education experience for up to 25 B.C. kids through our Classroom Gardening & Cooking Program.

Photo by Trudy Tran, T-Studio Marketing

Thank you to our Spring 2023 Adopt-A-Classroom supporters! 

Barbara Mackenzie (Vancouver classroom)

Connor, Clark & Lunn (Burnaby classroom)

Mary and Gordon Christopher Foundation (Vancouver classroom)

Les Dames D'Escoffier (Vancouver classroom)

Porte Communities (Vancouver classroom)

Port Moody Foundation (Port Moody classroom)

Adopting a classroom has many benefits, including receiving hand-made cards from the students, updates about the program in your classroom, and an invitation to watch the program in action. Teri from the Mary and Gordon Christopher Foundation recently visited a classroom and had this to say about the experience:

“Thank you for the fun experience this morning! My mom and I loved being with the kids! Growing Chefs is doing great work in classrooms.”

Please contact Afton Bell for more information on how you can adopt a classroom for fall 2023 or spring 2024! 

2021/2022 School Year: Program Update

The end of the school year has been busy for us at Growing Chefs. We have so many new faces on our team, some going out on parental leave, some going on vacation to enjoy the summer, all at the same time as program planning for next year. But before we get there, we’d like to recap and celebrate the end of the school year! 

2021 FALL PROGRAM

We had many celebrations in the 2021/2022 school year, the biggest one being our return to in-person programs! Thanks to our incredible volunteers, we delivered a safe and fun program that warmed everyone’s [artichoke] hearts. It’s so good to feel the energy of being back to school!

Over the course of four weeks, our fall program covered a wide range of subjects. To begin, the chefs helped the students plant a small windowsill garden.

Students monitored their gardens, and through a series of games, activities, art projects, and lessons focusing on plant growth, vegetables, sustainability, and food choices, they learned more about where their food comes from and how they are a part of their local food system. 

The kids were curious to try new scientific methods as they planted seeds and observed how plants grew over a few weeks. As a class, they came up with ways to test how different conditions affect plant growth and development.

Unfounded hypothesis :-)

Students learned how to read a recipe as they made pickled vegetables together with the chefs. They had the opportunity to take the recipe home and try it with their families, which was a big hit! Some kids returned to school the week after saying their caregivers also wanted to learn how to cook with us.

We love the willingness these kids show to try the salad, and more often than not, they pile their plates with seconds! Our plating and tasting activity promotes creativity and open-mindedness. The end result is a colourful, beautiful plate worthy of pictures.

“It was such a lovely experience volunteering with Growing Chefs! I really enjoyed seeing the students excited to learn about the different aspects of food and for some to break out of their comfort zones to try new foods. I was amazed that many students at such a young age were already very knowledgeable about the gardening process. I definitely learned a lot through this experience from the students and fellow chefs.”

— Helen Z., volunteer

They also had a Virtual Field Trip to either Earnest Ice Cream, Cheakamus Centre, or Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture, followed by a live inquiry Q & A session where students could speak directly with their respective teams. It’s amazing to see how engaging these conversations can be, and the types of questions that come up from the students. We have so many brilliant minds in our classrooms!

Check out a teaser of one of the Virtual Field Trips:

2022 SPRING PROGRAM

Historically, our Spring program is our longest one. Over the course of 6 weeks, chefs and students not only learned how to take care of their garden but also learned what composting means and how to do a compost stew, which is the perfect way to close the gardening cycle.

The kids explored their five senses as they examined vegetables and tried to guess what they were. They were also open to tasting different leafy greens and eating the very same greens that they planted in the first class.

One of the most exciting activities - for the chefs and the kids - is to cook together. We can see some sparkles in their eyes when they are able to cook a meal with what they have grown and worked so hard to take care of. This time, they prepped a delicious stir-fry!

“I like to think that Jennifer and I had more fun than the kids did, and that is hard to say because they had a blast. The kids we had this year were extraordinary, they gravitated so well towards the program, and they truly enjoyed it. I think one of our favorite memories was the knife cutting class we did with them in lesson 5. Once they realized they would be handling a knife, some of the kids went a little quiet and shy, perhaps a bit afraid, but as we walked each once of them individually through the drill, everyone was super proud to have used a knife to cut veggies with. Personally, I really enjoyed watching some of the kids go from non-veggie eaters to slowly getting into them with every class that passes by. Every week we had a better bond as a class and a better bond with our food. As per usual, the Growing Chefs salad dressing is always the rockstar of the show, and we heard the kids tell us that they keep making that salad at home.”

— Alex, school teacher at Pleasantsid

THE NUMBERS

• 48 classrooms engaged in programming!

• 1,500 kids engaged!

• 8 Intermediate classrooms in the fall for our Classroom Gardening & Cooking Program!

• 15 Primary classrooms in the spring for our Classroom Gardening & Cooking Program, including our return to programming in Victoria!

• 90 volunteers recruited, trained, and supported!

• 25 classes/groups on Virtual Field Trips!

We all love numbers, but nothing warms your heart more than stories from the students:

LunchLAB 

For those who don’t know, LunchLAB (a collaboration with Fresh Roots and the Vancouver School Board) is a fun, education program that serves healthy, delicious lunches prepared by a chef-in-residence, student chefs, and their teachers. Learning with their teacher and a chef-in-residence, students help create the menu, prepare the food, and serve it to their peers. It is an exercise in learning and sharing. And it’s delicious! 

Fall 2021 saw the return of LunchLAB at Total Education, while we were able to restart Lunchlab at Lord Roberts in Spring 2022. We can’t wait to return to LunchLAB in our 2023/2024 school year.

We’re incredibly grateful for each and every person who has helped to make these programs possible. After two years of online programming, we missed the energy of the teachers and students, and nothing would have been possible without our dear volunteers, our talented team of staff, and generous supporters. Let’s all continue to teach kids more about healthy food and healthy food systems. If you are looking for ways to get involved, check out the volunteer and donate pages of our website! 

HAVE A DELICIOUS SUMMER!

What We've Been Up To

The start of the 2020/21 school year has looked very different for our schools and for the Growing Chefs program. When schools were closed in March last year and learning shifted online, our program team was able to quickly adapt our classroom program to launch our Growing Chefs At Home Program. This program provided weekly lessons and activity content for teachers to share as a part of their online lesson plans, and for families at home to engage with food literacy learning. 

Given the incredibly positive response to these materials, the Growing Chefs program team continued to build out our online programming to continue offering engaging and interactive food literacy lessons to classrooms and families at home… all focused on teaching kids valuable gardening and cooking skills!

Growing Chefs Home-Learning Program

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Connecting Classrooms with Local Food Professionals Through Our Vegeta-pal Program

The Growing Chefs intermediate program for grades 4-7 went virtual in the fall, with “Growing Chefs At Home” continuing in a new format specifically catering to families and home-learners. We have just wrapped up the first of four cohorts of learners currently engaged in this new form of our intermediate programming. Our remaining cohorts will be concluding their lessons over the next month. Our 200 home-learners are guided through a series of ten themed lessons delivered on a weekly basis that include video lessons, printable worksheets, learning activity ideas, recipes, and more! All lessons aim to help connect learners with local healthy food in a fun and imaginative way.

Do you remember the excitement of having a pen pal when you were in school? In an effort to continue building connections between schools and the local food community, as well as continuing to engage our skilled and passionate volunteer base, Growing Chefs launched a pilot for a new “pen pal” style program in October. Teachers around B.C. signed up to be connected with a local chef or farmer, and we paired their class with local food champions who registered to volunteer as our “Vegeta-pals”. Vegeta-pal pairings exchanged email and video messages and, with support from our Growing Chefs team, these volunteers helped students learn more about healthy local food. Keep an eye out for the opportunity to join our upcoming spring cohort of Vegeta-pals coming soon!

Virtual Field Trips now available for Classrooms and Home-learners

In order to foster community connections and interact more directly with students, Growing Chefs has been developing a series of interactive virtual field trips for classrooms and home learners. After piloting our first field trip with three classrooms in December, we are so excited to announce that these field trips are now open for teachers to register their classes to take part in!

These virtual field trips allow students to explore their local food systems, interact live with local food experts related to the theme of the field trip, see and explore unique locations, and think critically about new ideas… all while staying in the comfort and safety of the classroom or home.

Check out the video below for a teaser of what we’ll explore on our field trip to Fresh Roots Urban Farm and sign your classroom up for one of these upcoming workshops today!

More to come this March!

As Growing Chefs continues to adapt, we recognize that this is still a challenging time for everyone. We are continuing to listen to educators and families to ensure that the programming, content, and support we provide is designed to meet the needs of the community. Our spring primary program for grades 1-3 will be run in a virtual format once again, starting up just after spring break. Since spring is the perfect time to get students’ hands in the dirt, start gardens, and get outside, we are working on some additional materials and support with the Master Gardeners Association of Vancouver to help teachers and schools get their students growing this year! Stay tuned for more updates as spring approaches.

The 2018/19 School Year

School’s out for summer and that’s a wrap on our 2018/19 program year, once again our biggest program year to date.

We are very excited to share that thanks to 249 volunteers we were able to bring our Classroom Gardening and Cooking Program to 73 classrooms across 13 school districts in B.C. That’s over 1,600 kids learning to grow and cook healthy food!

Every classroom starts our program by planting seeds to start their own indoor windowsill garden. Students then observe and care for their gardens over the course of our three months in their classroom until it is time for us to harvest and cook with what we’ve grown.

As the gardens grow, our chefs introduce kids to new and interesting vegetables, encouraging them to explore new flavours. Our participating teachers observed their students become more willing and interested in trying new foods throughout the course of the program in their classrooms.

Students also learn about nutrition, how foods affects our bodies, and the importance of eating healthy. Entire classrooms would go crazy for second and third helpings of salad made from spinach after hearing how it helps make them stronger. A grade 2 student from one of our classrooms at Van Horne Elementary has even made a habit of showing his teacher the healthy snacks he brings in his lunch every day after their class participated in our healthy salad making lesson.

Every Growing Chefs! lesson involves eating and tasting but no lesson is more exciting for students, teachers, and volunteers alike than our stir fry cooking lesson. Students excitedly sit in their chairs as they watch our chefs go over how to use a knife and demonstrate their knife skills. A grade one class at Tecumseh Elementary even broke out into a chorus of “oo’s and ah’s” as our chef demonstrated how to core and slice a green pepper.

Together students harvest our gardens, washing and laying out all their vegetables, and prepping everything working together in teams. As we start cooking, a murmur of exclamations about the aromas and sounds coming from our sizzling woks starts to spread throughout the group until they cannot contain their enthusiasm and everyone begins talking about how hungry and excited to eat they are.

Servings are dished out and chefs, students, teachers, and even some guests sit down together to enjoy the product of their labours. Seeing the thoughtfulness and pride students take in their creation and participation in our classroom “kitchens” confirms that we have planted the seeds to creating lifelong healthy eaters.

We are so grateful to all of our volunteers and supporters who helped us make this year a success! The impacts you have helped us made are huge:

• 81% of teachers surveyed agree they saw an improvement in healthy eating habits and healthy food included in student lunches and snacks.

• 98% of teachers surveyed agree their students’ knowledge about where food comes from and sustainable food systems improved through our program.

• 100% of teachers surveyed agree that the Growing Chefs! Program improved students willingness to try new foods.

Volunteer Spotlight: Brennen Murray

Our Classroom Gardening and Cooking Program is 100% delivered by our wonderful volunteers. We literally could not do what we do without the generous support of our volunteers who not only donate their time but their knowledge. Since it is National Volunteer Week and we have the BEST volunteers, we want to highlight a few. First off is a first-time volunteer (with us), Brennen Murray.

Hi! Tell us a little about yourself.
”Hello! My name is Brennen Murray. I've worked in coffee and food for over ten years, am a barista and a cook at Renfrew Park Community Centre as well as with The Kidsafe Project. I am interested in food sovereignty, urban farming, and localized food systems. I live in a communal home on Victoria Drive where we work to build a closer, sharing community and learn more about growing things.”

We hear you're a worm guy. Tell us more!
”When I first moved to Vancouver and started becoming an urban gardener, I found container gardening to be inefficient and needing constant fertilizing and found myself wishing for the compost pile that was always rotating around the backyard I grew up with. A little bit of research brought me to the City Farmer Vermicomposting Program, which I recommend to anyone wishing to recycle their food scraps into healthy soil for growing things. My initial $25 dollar kit has grown over the years into several bins of worms feeding off the food scraps from a household of six and giving a welcome dose of organic soil every 6 months as well as compost tea (fertilizer) that can be used at any time.”

How did you hear about Growing Chefs?
”I came across Growing Chefs! in the fall while looking for ways to get involved in food security and food sovereignty.”

What made you interested in volunteering with us?
”With The Kidsafe Project, it is my responsibility to feed kids at my site during school breaks, but also to teach them about nutrition and the foods we eat. Growing Chefs! has a great curriculum that teaches kids all about growing food and ways to use it. I'm excited to watch kids interact with food in such a hands on manner and bring that excitement for food to the kids at Kidsafe.”

What's your favourite seasonal vegetable?
”Summertime: cucumbers, for the crisp, juicy bite fresh off the plant. Wintertime: Brussels Sprouts, because they grow all winter and just keep getting better.”

What is your earliest food-related memory?
”Either walking down the tall narrow rows of strung up peas in my mother’s garden, harvesting thick pods into a colander and often opening the pods and eating the peas fresh; or tip-toeing in the strawberry patch, turning the berries over to see which ones had ripened all the way around and were ready for eating.”

How did your first lesson in the classroom go?
”It was incredible! We examined seeds and their full grown vegetable form, planted the seeds, and imagined and hoped for a beautiful growing garden. I was definitely just as excited as the kids and can't wait to get back into the classroom for lesson two.”

Thank you so much Brennen - we (and your class) are lucky to have you.

Stay tuned this week for more volunteer spotlights.