Today young, tomorrow... leaders

How different are our eating habits from those of our parents and grandparents in the past? How have traditions and foreign cultures influenced our culinary experience?

Over the last scholastic year, everyone's appetite for learning increased at Maria Assumpta Girls Secondary School, Hamrun, when teachers and students collaborated on the Comenius project, "Today young, tomorrow... leaders", which focused mainly on how eating habits and food traditions have altered over time.

It all kicked off in November last year when Joanna Borg, school co-ordinator, together with two students - Gillian Barbara and Christina Pace - travelled to Rodez, France, for the first project meeting.

During this meeting Maltese students and teachers worked together, sharing ideas with students and teachers from the other participating countries, namely Italy, Portugal, France, Spain, Slovenia, and Greece.

Apart from exploring the changes in food traditions, it was decided to address other pertinent issues, namely the importance of having health-conscious and balanced diets to maintain good quality lifestyles, as well as media and how these influenced one's decisions about food.

During a teachers' meeting, it was decided to adopt a thematic teaching approach across the curriculum. The teachers of various subjects delivered lessons around the theme as well as integrated the topic through their subject syllabus.

During Home Economics, English and Maltese lessons students could research recipes for different types of traditional food. The end result was a recipe book on traditional Maltese festive food, such as prinjolata and figolli. English and French teachers elaborated further by corresponding with our project partners through e-mails and sharing of photos on traditional Maltese food.

During Physical Education lessons students learned more about and explored their Body Mass Index (BMI), becoming further aware of how their daily food affects their lifestyle through Personal and Social Development lessons.

Students reflected on media pressures as well as eating disorders and identified the life skills required to deal with such issues throughout life. During art lessons students expressed themselves creatively through painting and pottery. They also developed a series of cartoons and a poster which features on the cover of this year's school diary. Outside normal lessons, numerous activities were organised both inside and outside the school on the topics. Two school-based activities were a visit by Maltese author Matty Cremona and a healthy breakfast activity.

Ms Cremona visited the school to give a demonstration on how to cook imqaret and ottijiet. She explained that the most traditional and best tasting Maltese festive food is a reflection of the special blend of influences that have shaped our food heritage.

The school tuck-shop organised a week-long activity on the importance of a healthy breakfast. A number of information boards and leaflets were also given to students with tips on how to eat healthily, while students arriving early at school were provided with a healthy breakfast.

Form 4 students were taken on a day outing to Gozo, where together with their teachers they visited companies producing typical Maltese food, such as a bakery and a cheesecake outlet.

This was followed by a visit to a mushroom factory as well as a tomato production factory where students observed the production process as well as tasted the food.

The final visit to Gozo provided students with an insight into how different types of gbejniet are made. Students then tasted the gbejniet with the traditional hobz biz-zejt.

In March, Nikki Galea participated in an interim project meeting held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. During this meeting the activities of each participating country were discussed. The progress was encouraging and positive.

Maria Assumpta also took the initiative to propose a few ideas, namely a food dictionary in all the languages of the participating countries, as well as the formulation of a few games for which each country contributed answers to a series of questions.

The culmination of the project was the final project meeting held in Mytilene, Greece. Students Bernice Fenech and Janita Winters, in collaboration with their accompanying teachers Bernardine Spiteri and Sylvana Zammit Pulo, school co-ordinator, prepared a final presentation of all the work carried out at Maria Assumpta Girls Secondary by all teachers and students.

The outcome was successful and this was reflected in the enthusiasm, motivation and inspiration that the teachers at Maria Assumpta managed to instil in their students, who felt self-confident and proud of their professional and creative work.