The gifted fourth-grade classroom at Cheatham Hill Elementary School in Cobb County was hard at work. Students were painting posters, filling dozens of Mason jars with dry pasta and rolling silverware in napkins.
“Today is the deadline,” said 9-year-old Cameron Silva with great enthusiasm. “So it’s gotta be done today!”
The students were preparing to run a restaurant — specifically the third annual Kitchen Kids Café, which will take place Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in the school's data room, not in the cafeteria. It's still a school day, after all.
The class will prepare and serve Italian food, such as antipasti, baked ziti and Tiramisu cupcakes, for an expected 132 people, most of whom will be teachers, school staff members and parents.
It also serves as a fundraising event for a MUST Ministry program, Save It Forward.
This project is the brainchild of teacher Monica Alicea, and it combines two of her passions: service learning and cooking.
"It all started a couple of years ago when I read a book by Dave Burgess … called 'Teach Like a Pirate,'" Alicea said. "He talks about combining your professional passion, which mine is service learning, and your personal passion, which for me is cooking."
She decided to apply this concept in the classroom, and Cheatham Hill Elementary principal Keeli Bowen said she would’ve been crazy to say no to her pitch.
“When she first came to me with this idea, it included so much,” Bowen said. “It’s one of those all-encompassing activities where you can do math, reading, service learning and project-based (learning).”
Through the semester-long project, the kids participated in cooking lessons. They received lots of tips from Loren Martin, owner of West Cobb Diner, about running a restaurant. The kids visited West Cobb Diner one Saturday and were able to help open the restaurant alongside its normal staff.
“They’re so excited that they want to know all the gory details about the restaurant business, but we end up talking about the things they need to focus on for their little restaurant to be a success, and basically it’s teamwork,” Martin said. “They need to all work together instead of trying to do everything on their own.”
They also divided themselves into five teams, each with their own responsibilities. For example, the design committee was in charge of aesthetic design, such as banners and posters. Many were dedicated to companies that donated food and materials for the event, including Publix, Great Harvest Bread Company, Starbucks, Zaxby’s, Chick-fil-A, BB&T and See Beautiful, in addition to Grady Memorial Hospital.
The class meets only on Wednesdays, so the students had a lot of preparation work to do to get ready. It’s their responsibility to get it all done in time, Alicea said.
“I’m not a dictator in my class,” she said. “Right now, I’ve just been their supervisor, their coach, their cheerleader.”
That didn’t mean the learning ended. While rolling forks and knives in napkins, Alecia discovered the box of silverware they purchased included 60 forks but only 40 knives, which she thought was peculiar.
She used this, as well as the school's recent reaction to a pair of negative news stories, as a teaching opportunity for how to handle conflicts respectfully.
“What can I do about this?” she questioned to the class. “What did we do about those news stories?”
The class quickly responded, “Write a letter,” which was exactly the lesson Alecia was attempting to get across.
But there’s another important lesson Alicea said she’s trying to help the kids learn, and that’s serving others.
“When I told (one of) my students, ‘Oh my gosh, we have 132 people coming for our restaurant,’ his first comment was, ‘That means we can help 132 families with laundry detergent,’” Alicea said. “And my heart just bubbled over because the whole year that’s what I’ve been telling him.”
The student was referring to the Save It Forward program, which the Kitchen Kids Café is helping benefit. Save It Forward is the newest division of MUST Ministries, which operates food pantries in 24 Cobb County and Marietta schools and serves about 350 families a month. Restaurant patrons are asked to pay for their meals by donating a bottle of laundry detergent, not giving money. Save It Forward will contribute the detergent to families it serves.
“Part of what our families need the most is toiletry items and laundry detergent,” said Kristy Steely, volunteer coordinator with Save It Forward. “It’s one of those items that is much needed for these families that they can’t always afford.”
Alecia’s class researched not only Italy and its food, but homelessness in Georgia, specifically involving kids, in preparation.
Each diner will receive a Mason jar filled with pasta as a take-home gift. Each one has a little electronic candle inside, symbolizing the hope their donation gives.
“Yes, this project’s been a lot of fun, and you get to cook and serve your teachers,” Alecia said. “We also bring it back to the purpose of the project, which is providing laundry detergent for the Save It Forward program.”
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