#educooking – Our New Blog

The one thing that nobody asked for but hopefully some people will want, a weekly blog on all things cooking, nutrition and healthy lifestyles in the primary classroom (#educooking). A must follow for Primary DT leaders, PSHE coordinators, Healthy School leads, Teacher Training students and generally any teacher or teaching assistant who has an interest.

Who says it’s a must follow? Myself, James Deveney (Mr D of all the cookery spam videos and CK posts). I’ll be guiding you through this blog, with a few guests along the way, to help your school bring #educooking into its curriculum.

What’s this #educooking all about? Well, it’s our new hashtag. After 3 years of posting, tweeting and hash tagging, I came to realise that there was no hashtag out there that directly linked to cookery lessons, nutritional learning or anything ‘healthy lifestyles’ in schools. Yes, you can just hashtag #cooking, but the whole purpose of a hashtag is to signpost to the relevant audience and unfortunately Jamie Oliver looking for his latest recipe ideas, isn’t interested in anything Classroom Kitchen or unfortunately your Year One’s gingerbread people (well he might be, but he’s a busy man). So, #educooking, that’s the one that highlights cooking and nutrition (and anything healthy) in education. Feel free to use it.

I’d love to say the simple answer is because it’s on the curriculum but it has been for 7 years. So, why more interest in the last year?

Covid-19 Pandemic? Possibly. The ever-growing obesity crisis? Maybe so.

It’s a mix of all those things but most importantly, the peak in children’s interest! Through the multiple lockdowns, we saw a rise in children cooking and baking… ‘Please, not another banana bread’, we would scream. However, new hobbies were sparked and so now is the perfect time to act! Since the pandemic, I’ve had multiple comments from teachers regarding how much their pupils are now into baking and cooking. Therefore, it’s the perfect opportunity to utilise #educooking to inspire great learning across school. Yes, across school, across multiple subjects.

Maybe you’re looking to get your school cooking, learning about nutrition or building pupils’ knowledge on healthy lifestyles. Maybe you already do those. If you haven’t got your school cooking yet, then think, what’s stopping you as a school so far? Is it time in the curriculum, equipment, teacher knowledge or do you just need to invest some more time as a school into planning it out. Over the continuing blog posts, hopefully I can help you with new ideas as well as how to develop and #educooking curriculum in your school.

You’re half way down my first blog post so either you’ve got an interest, you’re relating to what’s being said or you’re scrolling down to tell me I’m wrong in the comments below. Whatever the case, thanks for sticking with me so far.

If you have got an interest in #educooking or healthy lifestyles in schools then definitely keep your eye out for blog posts each Thursday. Bookmark this page and you’ll be able to navigate from here. There may even be a surprise extra one in between, who knows!

I’ve waffled on for 7 paragraphs and now I may give you one useful one…

If you’re starting from scratch in your school with #educooking, take note of what’s already being taught and what already goes on. Any of it useful? Then keep it. Make a big deal of it. Applaud it. Sometimes as teachers, we’re always keen to start again, start afresh, but honestly, that’s probably not practical, just the perfectionist in us. It can also offend our teaching friends, especially if they value what they do. So take note of the good, keep it in place for the time being and get to work on establishing a new core to your #educooking curriculum. Look for what needs to be at the foundations and avoid just creating ‘one-off’ events.

Over the next few blog posts, I’m going to delve deeper into creating an #educooking curriculum. I’ll be discussing where I started out when I created the one for Classroom Kitchen and some top tips for what you can do to create yours. If you’ve already got an established curriculum in your school, hopefully you’ll find a few new ideas along the way. What I would ask though, is share your ideas and good practice in the comments below or drop me an email to james@classroom-kitchen.co.uk.

For anyone who doesn’t know me or hasn’t met me before, I’m James Deveney, owner of Classroom Kitchen and former Primary Teacher.

Contact:

Email: james@classroom-kitchen.co.uk

Twitter: /educooking_MrD