What happens when you give 600 students cutting boards, fresh veggies, and a mission to eat better?
You get a district full of confident young cooks and a success story that’s changing how schools think about nutrition education.
For more than a decade, Lift Enrichment has been helping schools bring cooking and nutrition to life through chef-led, hands-on program that make healthy eating exciting and accessible.
From small pilot classes to district-wide initiatives, the results speak for themselves: more engagement, better food literacy, and happier, healthier kids.
One of our favorite success stories comes from Rosemead School District, located just 20 minutes east of downtown Los Angeles, in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley.
Made up of four elementary schools and one middle school, Rosemead serves 2,900 TK through 8th grade students, 100% of whom are minorities and 71% economically disadvantaged. To these kids, a Rosemead education is a lifeline, in part because of how the district views the word “education.”
For Rosemead, it’s not just about good grades. It’s about nurturing kids as a whole, intellectually, physically, emotionally, and ethically too.
Their mission motto?
LEAD:
Create leaders & lifelong learners to teach kids how to live an ethical life, academic excellence, and the value of diversity.
(This isn’t lip service either. Back in 2019, all five schools got the nod in the Educational Results Partnership Honor Roll for high achievement in student success.
Of course, another thing Rosemead’s big on?
Healthy lifestyles.
Which meant that cooking program was a natural addition to their tip-top afterschool program.
Small beginnings blossom into an ambitious after-school cooking program
In spring of 2024, Rosemead brought us in to deliver 120 workshops, teaching 300 of their TK through 6th grade students how to cook. But with the kids loving it and staff finding it a breeze, they decided to triple the size of the program six months later to 300 workshops serving 600 students a week.
What did their students learn, you ask?
Well, over the course of a year and a half, our chef teachers taught kids a 5-cookbook program with 60 recipes. In spring 2024, the kids started with Healthy Cookbook 101. Now, they’ve made it all the way to Healthy Cookbook 105.
What does that mean in reality?
Well, the kids have learned to cook everything from pasta primavera to mac & cheese and Asian recipes like chicken teriyaki and chow mein noodles, all the way to a very healthy (and very tasty) version of a Taco Bell burrito.
Deborah Lawrence, the Child Development Administrator who runs the afterschool program told us,
“Children (and us adults!) like to eat. As with everything in a child’s life, when an item is new, it is exciting and engaging. As time passes, the novelty wears off. I think it is great that students experience foods from different cultures and try food they would not normally be offered.”
Hear, hear!
If you’re big on healthy lifestyles too and fancy teaching your district’s kids cooking skills and nutrition, you might be interested in how an afterschool cooking program would work with your school.
To find out more (along with the government grants available to help you fund the program), you can book a free call with one of our team by clicking the link below
Previous Newsletters:
How to make healthy food fun for kids, #1 food for a student’s brain? Chef Daniel, New York Schools Are Saying About Our Program, Why Good Food Equals Good Grades