2023 Food Educator of the Year Jackie Dean, Carshalton Boys Sports College
We know it’s the passion and drive of the food educators that can make all the difference – and that’s certainly the case for Jackie.
The thing is, Jackie, who is head of Food Studies at the school, understands that teaching food is more than just about cooking. These lessons develop literacy, numeracy and functional skills, as well as helping students feel included in a school community. And at Carshalton that’s even more important, as they have lots of international children. Jackie and her assistant Michelle Hepburn take these children under their wings and teach them that studying food can be cool!
Jackie, along with Michelle, helps the children become more aware of their own diets, while introducing them to delicious new foods. They also regularly invite professionals (including Jamie and Raymond Blanc) into school, which of course is a highlight! And with children from all over the world – Greece, Turkey, Ghana, to name a few – they explore a fantastic variety of cuisines, which ensures lessons are as fun and flavoursome as they can be.
We’ve also heard it’s impossible to ignore their classroom, as mouth-watering aromas travel down the corridors, so we couldn’t think of a better team to win this prestigious award.
Judged and presented by Jamie Oliver
Jackie says…
We teach food beyond the classroom… Hour-long lessons are actually quite short, so we provide extra opportunities where the kids have time to cook two or three dishes. We hold master classes in the school holidays, and we have our own little Saturday Kitchen sessions, where students come in and cook. It’s so popular, we have a waiting list for it. A really successful Saturday Kitchen session was for Mother’s Day, where they all went home with a little box of sausage rolls, decorated biscuits and homemade cake. These sessions get the boys involved and passionate about the subject.
Not all of our boys love food tech, but they do love eating! So as long as we’re cooking dishes that tempt them, then generally you’re on to a winner. Clearing up is slightly different, mind you! A lot of them just enjoy the food they can eat at the end of the lesson, it’s a great motivator!
Quite a lot of boys will go home and cook with and for their parents. It is a life skill they all need, and I think they understand that. One of my students is doing his Duke of Edinburgh award, with food as his skill. And he said, ‘I’m supposed to cook once a week for at least an hour, but I cook way more than that, because I cook things that we cook at school.’
Our secret? We’re organised, we provide all the ingredients for our students, and we have a full-time technician. By sorting the food, we take the stress and hassle away from the parents and the students. There’s none of that having to go to the supermarket late at night, because they’ve just remembered they have food tech the next day. We also have really good relationships with the students – we’re firm, but they know we’ll make the lessons enjoyable, and it’s going to be a lesson where they’ll be able to get really stuck in.
I’ve been teaching for 27 years, and I still love it. I’ve always wanted to be in the classroom. It’s easy to just stick with the recipes you know and what you’ve planned before, but we always like to try new things and keep up with current trends. It might sound businesslike, but it’s about knowing your customer. We know that if we do a fillet of fish, maybe two thirds of the class will enjoy it. But if we do fish cakes, then three quarters of the class will be engaged.
It’s really important to understand the students you’re teaching. I asked the students what they’d like to cook and the answers were the usual: kebab, roast dinner, KFC… So we were like, right, let’s make it happen. We do a healthy KFC-style chicken burger and chicken kebabs. And the class worked together to make a roast dinner at Christmas, cooking a dish each, which they all enjoyed at the end of that hour. It’s about asking the kids what they want to eat and learn, and getting them involved.
We have six air-fryers now, because the boys like trying a new trend. But also, you can make something really, really quick – that’s the bonus. So our KFC chicken burger is now served with air-fried potato wedges, because they only take 15 minutes – they take 40 minutes in the oven. And you can still cook them with the chicken burgers. I think it makes a difference, because they can see the end product in that short one-hour period of time.
It’s really rewarding to hear about the boys carrying on cooking when they’ve left school. Quite often I’ll get an email or bump into someone on the high street, and they’ll say, ‘Miss, I still cook such-and-such recipe’, or ‘I’m at uni and I’m cooking while everyone else is living on Pot Noodles!’ And that’s why you do it. You don’t always get instant feedback, but you know that at some point in their lives those boys are going to look back and go, ‘Oh, yeah, those food lessons were useful.’
Food is so much more than just teaching them a life skill. Although that is rewarding, of course. It’s the maths when weighing and measuring. It’s the reading of the recipe… It’s the time-keeping and organisation. Some boys might struggle with certain subjects individually, but in my class they’re doing them all quite naturally without even realising it. That’s so good to see.
If I hadn’t won the award, I don’t think I would’ve reflected on what I do. It was really nice to step back, see all the things I do and recognise the positive impact I’m having on so many students. It will be interesting to see if more boys want to sign up for GCSE this year because of the award, too.
I’m very lucky to see the progression of the kids. When they come in at Year 7, they struggle to make soda bread in an hour. But by the end of the six-week term, they’re making pasta with tomato sauce, or chilli con carne. You just see them grow, not just in cooking, but also in confidence and independence. Then when they’re in Year 11, I can just sit back and watch them at work!
People 100% underestimate kids. In 2024 I want to ramp up the skills and push the students. If you don’t challenge them, they’ll never learn. And they enjoy those lessons where we challenge them. Before, we’d debone chicken for our Year 10s, but now it’s almost standard for them to do it themselves. We want to really inspire them and get them involved much younger, captivating them so they choose us for GCSE. Because it’s a really good subject for them to do.