Eastern Kentucky University's Upward Bound program director contacted me in December of 2020 to look into developing and implementing a virtual program that would incorporate cooking lessons with high school Upward Bound students.  These students are the ones who would have previously attended classes with our staff in-person during the summer, but due to the COVID pandemic, would no longer be able to have access to these lessons or experiences.   The Upward Bound director and I teamed up with our NEP assistants and together we developed a series of lessons, to introduce high school students to cooking with increasing degrees of difficulty.  The pilot run of this program began in January 2021 with a "meet and greet' session followed by monthly cooking sessions in February up until May.  Upward Bound funded the program which included all materials, shipping costs, and the gift cards from our local Save-A-Lot to obtain their ingredients for each lesson.  We developed cooking kits for the students that included many of the tools that they would need to cook for themselves after they leave home and go off to college on their own.  The kits included items such as 8' skillets, mixing bowls, can openers, whisks, cutting boards, measuring cups and spoons, graters, and various other utensils and incentive items.  I set up my laptop to host the zoom event and used my document camera with an overhead mirror on the mobile kitchen at the Extension Office as a teaching tool so the students could participate and cooking along with us.  The lessons involved demos and discussions and students could interact as they saw fit via Zoom.

In the first few lessons of the program we served 25 students, but due to year end celebrations and extracurriculars, we  ended the last couple of lessons with 18-20 students.  The lessons varied in ingredients and skill levels.  The first lesson in January consisted of a meet and greet, where we shared expectations, the pre-program survey, and the students participated in ice breakers to share more about themselves and their interests in cooking.  One key expectation of the program was that the students would take initiative to do their own grocery shopping in a timely manner prior to the lessons, and would showcase their end products.  Students used a closed Facebook group created by the Upward Bound staff to report and show pictures of their recipes as they completed them and to also ask any questions they had outside of our zoom classes.  By giving the students the added component of grocery shopping, we reiterated with them some key components of finance and resource management skills. The second lesson in February started them out with a measuring lesson and consisted of a basic microwave limited ingredient no bake cookie recipe and honey raisin bran muffins.  The third lesson in March, featured Rocking Chicken Tacos from the 2021 KY NEP Calendar and the students were introduced to some knife skills as well as alternative protein options.  The fourth lesson in April built upon some of the knife skills and feature breakfast pizza and potato hash, which we also previously featured in the NEP calendar.  The final lesson in May we introduced them to pasta with the Plate It Up One Pot Pasta recipe and shared a fun Cake in a Mug recipe where they made individual cakes from scratch and we discussed and provided resources for cooking substitutions.  The students completed a post survey at the end and reported that they enjoyed the course and all learned new techniques or got new ideas from their experiences.   

Before the Pilot run of this program ended, word had traveled and the Berea College Upward Bound director had also reached out to us as well.  We quickly got things together and added them to the schedule, and started their "meet and greet" in April and will be wrapping up lessons in July. The format that they are using is similar, but instead have two meetings a month, giving us more time with them to do more lessons.  Berea College Upward Bound also 100% funds the program like EKU.  We are currently serving 7 students in the Berea College Upward Bound Program.

The EKU Upward Bound director also saw notable benefit of the program and has asked us to expand the program into a Part 2- Summer Series where the students will attend weekly lessons from June 10 through July 15.  The same format is being followed with new recipes as well as a new cooking toolkit.  The new cooking kit includes some of the same type of materials but this time features a 9x13 pan, a 3 quart saucepan, and a cookie sheet as well. We currently have 13 students enrolled in the follow up series and 4 of those being repeat students from the Pilot program.