1. Cooking Matters for Teens How-To Guide
This resource has been created to introduce you to Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters for Teens curriculum and share helpful tips and tricks for teaching and coordinating the course. Based on lessons learned from past classes, we hope this presentation serves as a valuable resource to help you use existing resources and your own strengths to lead a successful course.

2. Course Overview What is Cooking Matters for Teens?
A 6-week PARTICIPATORY cooking class that EMPOWERS teens to make smart choices when preparing food at home and eating away from home.
Who is involved?
Facilitator- coordinates materials and volunteers; serves as a host for the class, provides weekly intro and wrap up for class cohesion
Nutrition Instructor- facilitates learning about healthy eating and shopping
Culinary Instructor- facilitates learning about healthy and safe food preparation
Class Assistant(s)- supports instructors and keeps class on track
The teens!
Thank you for volunteering to share your strength with members of your community! In this course, you will engage teens from families with limited resources in a series of participatory cooking classes designed to empower them to work together to get the most nutrition out of a limited budget.
You’ll be working as part of a team for this course and will have the opportunity to get to know some wonderful members of your community. As the course facilitator you will lead your team, ensuring that volunteer instructors are recruited and trained. In addition to making sure materials and food that the class needs are prepared each week, the facilitator will also serve as a sort of “emcee” for your class, introducing and wrapping up each lesson as well as creating class cohesion by connecting to previous weeks’ material.
The nutrition and culinary instructors will lead each class using the facilitated dialogue guide found in the instructor guide book, helping the participants learn about new topics, and also share their own strengths with each other.
Classroom assistants help keep everything running smoothly and on time, providing extra assistance for activities and engaging participants. Some courses include additional assistant such as shoppers, who source the food for the class, or child care providers.
To help you navigate who does what, the slides in this presentation will be labeled in the top left corner with which team member should be responsible for completing the tasks described.

3. Target Audience: Course Basis: Teens in 6th-12th grade
Dietary Guidelines for Americans
The goal of this class is to empower teen in families with limited incomes with the knowledge and skills to make healthy eating choices. The curriculum encourages the teens to share what they’re learning with their families and use it as a foundation in developing a healthy lifestyle in the future.
Like all other Cooking Matters curricula, the Teens course uses the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and MyPlate as the foundation for basic nutrition guidelines, and builds upon these ideas, using interactive lessons to teach cooking, food safety, and food resource management.
Evidence-based guidelines
Goal: Promote good health, healthy weight, and prevent disease
Applicable for age 2 to adult, including those at risk for chronic disease

4. Approaching the Instructor Guide
This presentation is not meant to replace your instructor guide. The guide is the most valuable resource you have in preparing for and teaching this course, so don’t forget to look over it before and keep it on hand during each class. As we go through an overview of the course, it will be helpful to follow along in your book to see the resources as we discuss them. There are sections for facilitators and instructors, so the facilitator should make sure that each person helping with the class has a copy of the guide.
Your instructor guide is divided into 4 sections:

5. Approaching the Instructor Guide
…the first section has each weeks’ lesson plan,

6. Approaching the Instructor Guide
…the second is a bank of activities you can pull from when working with the teens,…

7. Approaching the Instructor Guide
the third is a compilation of all the handouts for the course, organized by lesson. These are all in the participant booklets, unlike the lesson plans.

8. Approaching the Instructor Guide
The last section contains all the recipes for the course, as well as an index for easy reference.

9. Approaching the Instructor Guide
Starting with the first section of lesson plans: You can see that each of the six week’s plans follows the same pattern.
Based on an overarching goal for the week, the curriculum will walk you through how to teach key points, giving you discussion questions and referring to activities and handouts in the books’ other sections to support your exploration of the theme as a class.
The first page of each lesson has a quick reference guide of all the materials you need for the class and suggested handouts and recipes that will help participants connect to the material.
It is the facilitator’s role to prepare needed materials and handouts for each class, so be sure to discuss what you will need from these lists with any volunteer instructors ahead of time so you know what to gather.
The first pages of Lessons 1 and 2 in your instructors guide offers a good examples of the typical lesson layout. Because each group of teens is unique, the guide has been written to allow you to adapt the lessons based on the interests and abilities of your group. Keep an eye out for the helpful tips…

10. Approaching the Instructor Guide
throughout the lessons to help you make these adaptations. This is especially important in Cooking Matters for Teens classes, as the participants’ abilities and learning styles will vary greatly based on the age and maturity level of your group.
If you need to address allergy concern or are facing kitchen limitations…

11. Approaching the Instructor Guide
the Suggested Recipes list will help you easily choose recipes that meet your needs and support your lesson.

12. Preparing for the Course
Facilitator
Visit your site
Check available classroom and kitchen facilities
Learn about site rules and processes
Gather host site contact information
An important step for the class facilitator to complete before the course is a site visit of where the class will be hosted. Visiting the kitchen and classroom areas to see what facilities are available before the course starts can help you streamline pre-class set up and avoid snags on the first day. Be sure to check what tables, chairs, white boards, and cleaning supplies are available in the classroom, and what kitchen appliances are allowed to be used and are operational. It’s a good idea to take a picture of the site so you can remember what was there when planning for your course later. It’s also very helpful to have a staff member from your host site present at the walk-through to orient you to any rules for using the facilities and inform you of policies, such as which doors are locked when and who to call if problems arise during class.
Example site visit photo

13. Preparing for the Course
Facilitator
Map out your lessons
Pick out promising activities to share with instructors as options for your class
Draft a list of recipes for each week
Taking a step back to see the big picture of the course before starting is also very helpful for the facilitator and instructors. The facilitator should look through the curriculum before the course starts and map out a schedule for using the suggested recipes and activities found in each of the six lesson plans. This is a sample plan of recipes for a teens class that we use, depending on the kitchen facilities at your host site. This chart can be modified to fit your course, and activities can be mapped out for each week as well.
While your plan might change, it’s helpful to go ahead a pick a recipe for each week to ensure you have a variety of recipe types and cooking techniques represented without repeating. For example, if you were to select veggie wraps, peanut butter pockets, and apple wraps for your class, the kids may get tired of tortilla-based recipes. Try to mix up your recipes so multiple cooking techniques are represented, such as using a blender, a skillet, and no-cook dishes. Plan to include entrees, snacks, and sides that ensure at least 3 food groups are represented during each class. Keep in mind what kitchen facilities you observed during your site visit. If your site has a stove but no oven, for example, you should not plan on making mini pizzas or other oven-dependent recipes.
Also consider if you will be offering take-home groceries or portions for your teens after each class. If teens are at a camp, for example, and have nowhere to store the ingredients, this might not be a good option for your group. Take-home groceries that allow the teens to make at least one recipe from class on their own are a wonderful way to engage their whole household, though, so discuss with your host site and food sourcing team if this is a possibility.
Sample plan for weekly recipes depending on kitchen facilities

14. Preparing for the Course
Facilitator
Nutrition
Instructor
Extreme Food Makeover
Make sure teaching team is on same page
Determine rules and point system
Spend time each lesson
Select your panel of judges
Make it fun!
Culinary
Instructor
The cornerstone of your Teens class is the Extreme Food Makeover Challenge. Your instructor guide has an overview of the activity on page I-vi, and a sample scoring chart on the following page.
This is a challenge the teens will be working on throughout your course, so each instructor should be sure to read this over before the course begins. Your teaching team should also meet as a group to go over how the challenge will be directed and scored, so that everyone is on the same page. It’s also helpful to have a volunteer designated as each team’s special helper, to prompt them through thinking about how to make their recipe adaptations. Consider creating a plan for how to split up your group and which volunteers will be assigned to facilitate teams.
The facilitator should make sure the rules and points are clear for the team so the teens know what is expected of them and how they can work towards winning as a team. The facilitator should consider creating a scoring chart to hang up in the classroom to keep teens directed and motivated as you spend time on the challenge each lesson. This is a great thing to go over as a teaching team during volunteer training when you are mapping out the activities you will use in the course, so you know what points can be earned when.
As you plan for your challenge, be sure to discuss who will serve as your panel of judges. Your instructor guide’s activity overview in Lesson 6 gives a few good ideas, such as inviting parents or host site staff such as school administrators or camp directors. Deciding this now give you time to contact your potential judges and ensure they save the date so they’re able to attend.