Some students were wards of the province. And they all had experienced some serious form of mental or physical abuse to end up in our classroom. They were not allowed to attend a regular school. Some had been in detention centres for crimes committed. The students were mostly from Grades 6-11. Our goal, whenever possible, was to get them back into the school system. One thing that we learned early, and the reasons were many, is that they were all depressed.

The maximum number of students in the classroom was eight. While that sounds like an ideal size, when they all showed up it was a challenge to get anything academic or otherwise accomplished. The students came with a lot of survival concerns they faced daily. They were often angry because of a constant sense of betrayal and abandonment. Remember, these young people had no family life to guide and support them. 

Anyway, during a school day one of the students made a comment about my lunch as we ate together. We had to supervise the students during the entire day. She said that someone at home must have cared dearly for me because I always brought a healthy lunch. She assumed my wife made the lunches. I replied that I was the one responsible for preparing the lunches for the whole family. 

What I usually brought with me was a sandwich, a bottle of water and a couple of fresh fruits. From that lunchtime exchange, I suggested to the class if they wanted to cook once a week, so on that day there would be no need to bring a lunch. They all agreed. I did make one rule: they had to write the recipe for the meal or whatever we made. My aim was to get them to write and improve their language skills.

The whole exercise turned out to be a great success. The most difficult part of the activity was to convince the executive director of the group home to let us use a kitchen in the basement that had been closed for some time. Once we got permission, I managed to get a local grocery store to supply us with most of the ingredients we needed to make sandwiches or the planned meal. It turned out that most times the students wanted a warm lunch.

What did we cook? We rotated and each of us took turns at being the "chef" in charge. The day before we made a list of the groceries we needed. Either myself or the youth worker would do the shopping and bring in the required ingredients the next day. There were some days, when the class was well behaved, that we actually did the shopping together. Some of the lunch meals we made were pizza, beef stew, spaghetti, jerk chicken, empanadas, veal cutlets, lasagna, steak, soup, many kinds of sandwiches, pasta al forno, meatballs, calzone and other dishes.

The students began the writing process reluctantly. But writing the recipe was the deal, and I stuck to the plan. To start them off, I gave them sample recipes or told them to begin by making a list of the ingredients we used. Once they wrote down the list of ingredients, they could then write about the steps in making the meal. Without realizing it, the list of ingredients is actually a good outline of the points one needs to start writing. Later, some of students decided they were going to write about their lives. And I let them do it.

From recipe writing, they started producing autobiographies. I made sure to encourage them by not marking the grammar and spelling mistakes. Failure is something they had already experienced too many times. So, I simply circled or underlined with a pencil the language errors and gave them several opportunities to re-write their assignment in order for them to get a better grade.

It turned out that on our cooking day, seldom was there a student absent. We ended up enjoying a good meal together, something the students didn't experience too often, and they wrote the recipes. But most importantly they ended up writing about their own stories. And while it wasn't planned, I'm sure the activity was good for their mental health while improving their writing skills. Some did several drafts just to improve their grades. 

That's how cooking and recipe writing saved my teaching job. For any parent or teacher, especially in a regular classroom, forget the standard theories of teaching students how to improve their writing. If you can, cook something together or make a good sandwich and then ask the pupils to write the recipe. Who would have guessed that spaghetti writing is good for the stomach and even better nourishment for the art of writing and thinking. I'm serious. Bon Appétit!