Kialla West Primary School, a medium-sized school with about 200 students, has a strong network of teaching staff working together to ensure their Prep to Year 6 students have abundant access to fresh, nourishing food and drink.
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For the past 18 months, Healthy Kids Advisors’ Katie Thorp has linked with the school to make its classrooms and play spaces fun, informative platforms to connect students to positive food experiences.
This relationship with the Healthy Kids Advisors initiative has given a passionate teacher at Kialla West the chance to finally achieve the healthy eating goals she had earmarked for implementation.
With teachers and principals around the country often challenged with a heavy workload and extracurricular commitments, addressing healthy food and drink is often a wish list item that many schools need help to get to.
“If you’re a teacher and you’re passionate about this area as well, but your workload is so incredibly heavy that you just don’t have the time physically to do it, then I highly recommend you get in touch with your local Healthy Kids Advisor,” Year 2 teacher Bec Parris said.
“They have the means, the how and the passion. Together, you will achieve great things.”
Banding together
Principal Wes Teague and the Parents and Friends group have consciously moved away from traditional fundraising ideas, such as chocolate boxes, and replaced them with other fundraisers, such as crazy sock day.
Ms Parris is the cornerstone staff member leading the charge for healthy eating at Kialla West, having been teaching students for the past seven years.
“The school loved all of the ideas that I was able to bring to them,” Ms Thorp said.
“They were just so willing and able, and that came from the leadership groups from the very top, right down to the kids and families.
“Bec Parris, one of their junior school teachers, has been incredibly passionate and a real driver.”
Ms Thorp was initially tasked with running classroom sessions with the junior year groups to explore the colourful variety of local fruits and vegetables and their nourishing ‘superpowers’.
The juniors were engaged and excited about the classroom learning, so she ran additional workshops with the senior year groups to set up students for further conversations around boosting their school with plenty of fresh water and beneficial food.
Tasty variety at the canteen
Having listened to staff and student voices about the healthy ideas they wanted to usher into the school, Ms Thorp was excited to meet canteen manager Kamal Sidhu.
Ms Sidhu prepares everything on Thursdays and opens up the roller doors to students and staff every Friday.
Ms Thorp has enjoyed collaborating with Ms Sidhu to achieve Vic Kids Eat Well adjustments to the menu.
Together, they’ve boosted healthy variety by reducing the number of processed pies and pastries to just two healthy options.
They’ve introduced an air fryer to cook the chicken schnitzels, boosted salad in the wraps and wowed the students with frozen pineapple rings, which have replaced high-sugar frozen lollies.
The teachers of Kialla West lead by example, ordering their healthy lunches from the canteen every week.
Having new options on the menu has been a help for the teaching staff because by Friday, the staff are typically exhausted, and all their meal prep for the week has usually run out.
“It’s great to have lots of different healthy options on our canteen menu,” Ms Parris said.
“Not just for the kids, but for our staff as well.”
Simple, seasonal food spreads throughout the school
“Katie has really helped us with refreshing our canteen menu,” Ms Parris said.
“We’ve got our veggie garden up and going, and we’ve started implementing updates in our weekly newsletter to let parents know how we’re tracking with our healthy goals.”
With discussions flowing, the buzz around fresh, delicious food reached Kialla West’s Italian class.
Rose Corbo was inspired to run a cook-a-long with her year levels to prepare and share an Italian bruschetta recipe.
Students read the recipe in Italian and practised their conversational skills while preparing and sharing their toasted sourdough topped with tomatoes, garlic and basil.
Like many schools post-COVID-19, there was only a shell of a vegetable patch at Kialla West when full-time campus life recommenced in 2022.
School chaplain Tim Ford has led the reinvigoration of the garden area, encouraged by Ms Thorp and Ms Parris’s enthusiasm to get the garden space flourishing again.
Mr Ford holds weekly garden drop-in sessions at recess and lunchtime for students to chat together and tend to the corn, mint, silver beet and other leafy greens.
“I am so excited to see Kialla West Primary School continue to thrive and prosper in this space,” Ms Thorp said.
“They have done such a wonderful job, and I know they will continue to have wonderful plans and visions for what the rest of the year will look like.”
Cadet Journalist