Our Cook for Kids Culinary Training Program focuses on workforce development to ensure that more school cooks are equipped with the culinary skills to help feed kids real food, offering public school students more scratch-cooked, plant-forward, and culturally-inclusive recipes as well as nutrition education. Our Culinary Training Program is implemented in three primary models, and we work closely with districts to design a one-size-fits-one model to most effectively support their specific goals. The three approaches are as follows:
Flagship
Our Flagship program places a WITS Chef in a school two days/week for a full school year. During this placement, WITS Chefs train the school cooks side-by-side in their kitchens on the skills needed to prepare scratch-cooked, plant-forward and culturally-inclusive recipes; work with the school community at large to form or support the Wellness Committee; teach children and families culinary and nutrition education (WITS Labs and WITS BITS); and connect the changes on the lunch menu to the school wellness culture.
Offsite CookCamp
CookCamp is an intensive offsite culinary training for school cooks with hands-on follow-up and ongoing network support. During CookCamp, school cooks prepare recipes from their district menus while honing critical culinary skills and learning the why behind our work. As such, we include core WITS programming such as FIT BITS and demonstrations of WITS Labs and WITS BITS, modeling the lessons we teach to children. We offer a variety of lessons, all adapted to our districts’ individual needs.
Side-by-Side
Side-by-Side training places a WITS Chef in a public school kitchen for a day, month, or more, depending on the needs of each school kitchen and the district at large. It is a one-size-fits-one approach that advances workforce development and builds a school’s internal capacity to increase scratch-cooked, plant-forward, and culturally-inclusive school meals. Our Side-by-Side trainings are tailored to the specific needs of school cooks and build culinary skills such as knife skills, mise en place, time management, batch cooking, and storage and organization.
