With the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Pilot Light has had the wonderful opportunity to collaborate with The Primary School to learn from one another and explore potential ways to share our food education model with their students and families. The Primary School, which was co-founded by Priscilla Chan and Meredith Liu and opened its doors in East Palo Alto, California in 2016, integrates academics with health care and family support services, all of which are offered tuition free. We had originally planned to begin our collaboration by Pilot Light visiting The Primary School this spring (and vice versa), but with the COVID-19 travel restrictions in place we have come up with some new and exciting ways to advance our partnership.
Prior to COVID-19, The Primary School hosted parent groups to surface parents’ own wisdom in creating balanced meals that celebrate cuisines from diverse cultural backgrounds. Families also had the opportunity to meet individually with The Primary School’s parent wellness coaches and their child’s teachers to set goals around building nutritional habits at home through preparing meals with their child, eating as a family and encouraging their child to try new foods.
To support The Primary School’s students and families in being able to experiment in the kitchen during this challenging time of COVID-19, Pilot Light has provided Family Meal videos where chefs and teachers demonstrate how to cook certain recipes at home with children and their families. So that families can recognize familiar faces in the videos, The Primary School’s staff have filmed themselves modeling the Family Meal content and shared the videos via their remote learning platform. Now, families are preparing the Family Meal recipes at home, capturing their creations and sharing them back to their fellow classmates and teachers.
“These Family Meal videos have helped some of our families practice their nutrition goals in a fun, tangible way, and – perhaps more importantly – allowed for moments of family connection and exploration in the kitchen!” said Jessa Culver from The Primary School. “We’re excited to continue to offer these resources to our families over the summer!”
View all the free Family Meal videos, recipes and lesson plans at Pilot Light’s Food Education Center.