VCE VM 

A Recipe for Leadership

Frank Foale

Year 12

As part of our Year 12 VCE Vocational Major Personal Development Skills unit, we wanted to create an activity that supported younger students in learning life skills and also helped families by encouraging independence at home. 

We decided to run a cooking session with a group of Year 8 students, teaching them how to cook a simple and budget-friendly meal: spaghetti bolognese.

We started by taking a trip to Woolworths, where we prioritised quantity over brand names - aiming to get the most food for the least expense to reflect the reality of rising living costs. 

The cooking lesson went really well. The Year 8 students managed to prepare the whole meal in time, and they were genuinely excited and full of questions, which showed us they were engaged and keen to learn.

One hiccup we faced was taking a bit too long to explain how to use the Trangia stoves (the Outdoor Education gear), which meant we ran out of time to clean up. Unfortunately, that also meant we missed the chance to teach the importance of responsibility and leaving the space tidy! We ended up doing the clean-up ourselves during our next class.

For our second session, we took what we had learned the first time around, and made big improvements.   This time we cooked chicken parmigiana and because we managed our time better, we could eat and clean up together. The Year 8 students were already asking what we’d cook next and if we could do this again!

We’ve come to see this as more than just a school task—it’s an opportunity to build connections across year levels, help younger students grow, and develop our own leadership and planning skills in the process. 

We’d love to see this become a regular program that future Vocational Major students can continue—maybe even passing the torch on to next year’s cohort.