Special kids cooking up life skills
Appeal: Students with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder need groceries to keep Wednesday cooking program
Sam Horn had never chopped broccoli or cut up chicken thighs before. And, from the look on her face, the former vegetarian preferred cutting the broccoli to the chicken.
But she stuck it out through the two, big value packs needed to feed her and her 18 schoolmates.
Dustin Thorkelsson — West Coast Alternate School’s English, social studies, fine arts and junior health teacher — worked beside her wearing a frog-patterned apron, a tribute to his Wet’suwet’en family clan.
“I’m not much of a cook,” he said. “But I’m a good eater!”
Meanwhile, at another counter, Dawn Keewatin cut apples for the crumble next to “Mr. A.”
Mr. A — as Yann Arnold is called by West Coast’s students — buys the food and plans the menus for these Wednesday lunches even though his real job is teaching science, math and senior health.
Parisian-born, Arnold can cook. Although he’s not a chef, Mr. A learned from a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which his mother bought for him.
On this particular day, they were making his mom’s apple crumble recipe and following a new recipe for chicken with red beans and rice that Arnold had ripped out of a newspaper.
With the apples cut, Keewatin told Mr. A to get out of the way and let her fry the bacon for the main course.
She knows her way around a kitchen. She cooks for her family at home. Fried chicken is her best dish. But at school, fettuccine alfredo is her favourite, as it was with most of the students.
The students have a say in the menu planning, but Mr. A only allows fettuccine alfredo on the menu twice a year because, with all that butter and cream, it doesn’t fit the definition of healthy fare.
Every week, small groups of students work in the kitchen, do meal planning, budgeting. They learn how to read and follow recipes, safely cook healthy food for themselves and they learn how to use the equipment in the commercial kitchen.
These are special kids. They all have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which describes a range of physical, mental, behavioural and learning disabilities resulting from having been prenatally exposed to alcohol. It usually isn’t diagnosed until children start having problems in school.
It is the most common developmental disability in Canada and West Coast is Vancouver’s only specialized school for kids aged 13 to 19 with an IQ over 70.
The majority of the students come from the Downtown Eastside. Some live in group homes, while one lives in youth housing on the top floor of the Broadway Youth Resource Centre.
West Coast shares the centre’s second floor with another alternative school, Eagle High, which has a full academic program up to Grade 10. It’s where Keewatin is transferring to in January.
The centre is operated by Pacific Community Resources, a non-profit society that’s funded by the Vancouver school board, the Ministry of Children and Family Development and Vancouver Coastal Health.
The fully equipped kitchen is on the centre’s main floor, down the hall past the multi-purpose room, lounge and offices.
The goal for West Coast is to have students reach their highest potential, whether that’s completing a few modified high school courses, getting job skills or even just gaining life skills that will keep them safe and allow them to function more easily in the community.
The cooking program isn’t part of the curriculum even though it means some students can earn their Food Safe certificates, which are required for anyone working in food services.
The program exists only because Mr. A and Thorkelsson scrounge money and food from here and there for the Wednesday lunch, just like they do for the cereal and milk that they set out every day and the stashes of granola bars in their desks for kids who have missed both breakfast and lunch.
Without them, there would be no Wednesday lunches. No chance to learn enough kitchen skills to look after themselves and no chance to get Food Safe certificates so they can work in food services.
They need help. They’ve applied to Adopt-A-School for $2,600 to cover the food. It’s a meagre budget of little more than $3 a student a week.
And that’s all they’ve asked for.
But when pressed for a wish list, they both said it would be nice if they had money to buy a turkey so they could host a Christmas dinner for the students and their families.
It would be nice, they said, if somehow they could put together some hampers for half a dozen of those families who won’t likely have much to eat around the holidays.
And, at some point, wouldn’t it be nice if their special kids had something more than cereal for breakfast?