Paige scarbrough
Working at a kids’ culinary camp definitely has its challenges, getting their attention being one of them. I hear or yell, “1, 2, 3 eyes on me” everyday at camp, multiple times, and it is always followed by a chorus of “1, 2 eyes on you” and then silence. I quickly learned that it’s difficult to obtain twenty-five 6-10 year-olds full attention, so the fact that this simple chant works is amazing. However, once I have their attention, I have to figure out a way to keep it. This sometimes means improvising in the middle of an activity, lesson, or game to make it more interesting or fun because it turns out that what you think kids will like to do and what they actually like to do is not always the same thing. Another challenge with working at camp this year is that we do not have a real kitchen. Because SoFAB museum is in the middle of moving to a new location, the kids’ camp is taking place at a local church. We don’t have access to an oven, microwave, or refrigerator, so we’ve been using little camper stoves and whatever appliances our camp director brings from her house. These challenges have required me to be patient and flexible with activities and meals that we’ve planned because they might not always work well given the available space, time, and resources. It’s definitely been a learning experience, but one that I’m grateful to have had.
The kids don’t seem to notice or care how little resources we have this year, which is awesome. Everyday at the end of camp we have them shout their favorite thing that happened at camp that day, and last week one of the little boys came up to me and said that he didn’t shout anything. When I asked why, he said with a huge grin, “Because I couldn’t pick one, I loved everything!” It was absolutely adorable especially because at the beginning of the week he had said that his mom was making him come to camp. Another day, a parent of one of our campers brought us some of the spaghetti with meatballs and fruit salad that her son had made for their family the night before. She said they often run by the grocery store after camp, so he can cook whatever we made in camp that day for dinner.
Little moments like these reaffirm why I decided to spend the summer in New Orleans with Duke Engage and specifically why I wanted to have the opportunity to work with SoFAB. One of the missions of this culinary camp is to help children learn how to take care of their bodies by paying attention to the food they put into them. Our camp is also meant to be a unique experience for these kids, a place where they are able to try foods that maybe they had not been open to trying before or maybe even had never seen before. When a camper walks away from a taco lunch loving avocados after we spent 15 painful minutes convincing her to just try a little bite, a feeling of success washes over me as I remember why this camp exists. I take pride in that fact that these kids are walking away with new knowledge, new recipes, and sometimes a new favorite food. It’s been an amazing experience thus far, and I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that there are only two weeks of camp left.
PS. The 4th of July fireworks show that New Orleans puts on every year is fantastic! We watched from Woldenberg Park!
The kids don’t seem to notice or care how little resources we have this year, which is awesome. Everyday at the end of camp we have them shout their favorite thing that happened at camp that day, and last week one of the little boys came up to me and said that he didn’t shout anything. When I asked why, he said with a huge grin, “Because I couldn’t pick one, I loved everything!” It was absolutely adorable especially because at the beginning of the week he had said that his mom was making him come to camp. Another day, a parent of one of our campers brought us some of the spaghetti with meatballs and fruit salad that her son had made for their family the night before. She said they often run by the grocery store after camp, so he can cook whatever we made in camp that day for dinner.
Little moments like these reaffirm why I decided to spend the summer in New Orleans with Duke Engage and specifically why I wanted to have the opportunity to work with SoFAB. One of the missions of this culinary camp is to help children learn how to take care of their bodies by paying attention to the food they put into them. Our camp is also meant to be a unique experience for these kids, a place where they are able to try foods that maybe they had not been open to trying before or maybe even had never seen before. When a camper walks away from a taco lunch loving avocados after we spent 15 painful minutes convincing her to just try a little bite, a feeling of success washes over me as I remember why this camp exists. I take pride in that fact that these kids are walking away with new knowledge, new recipes, and sometimes a new favorite food. It’s been an amazing experience thus far, and I’m having a hard time accepting the fact that there are only two weeks of camp left.
PS. The 4th of July fireworks show that New Orleans puts on every year is fantastic! We watched from Woldenberg Park!