Meadow Park lesson lets students plan, prepare and serve Thanksgiving dinner

Seven students of Meadow Park Elementary School in Irvine prepared and hosted an entire Thanksgiving meal for around 20 of their teachers, administrators and school staff Wednesday.

The students in the school’s Specialized Academic Instruction class, who range in age from 10 to 12, took part in grocery shopping, cooking, decorating and hosting the event as part of the latest life skills portion of their lesson plans.

This year, Meadow Park education specialist Kathi Johnston decided to include more vocational training in the class. Prepping the Thanksgiving meal for guests in the school was their most recent project.

Previously, the class had participated in attending lunches at the nearby Lamppost Pizza and Ruby’s Diner and buying tickets to watch a movie at the local theater.

“As we worked on each item with the students, their excitement grew,” Johnston said. “They continued to step up to the plate, so we kept adding pieces to the program. I wanted them to experience the entire process of putting together a dinner from the thought process of planning, shopping, purchasing, preparing, cooking, and eating, along with the social expectation with the entertaining.”

To prepare for their Thanksgiving party at the school, the students first had to take care of an important order of business — sending invitations.

Each of them drew a turkey on an invitation with the event’s time, date and place, then personally delivered them to the teachers and staff they regularly see.

Last week, student Joseph Kim handed his invitation to Kristen Jackson, a fifth- and sixth-grade combo teacher at Meadow Park.

“He came into my classroom and gave me the invitation after school,” Jackson said. “He asked, ‘Will you come to my party?’ and I immediately said, ‘Yes, of course.’”

Jackson brought the invitation that Joseph hand-drew to the Thanksgiving event and propped it up on one of the table’s pumpkin centerpieces while she ate her meal with the students.

Joseph wore a button-up shirt and a blue bow tie to the meal that day.

The students and their teachers took a trip to a nearby grocery store Monday where they found the ingredients they needed for their meal and checked out at the register.

In one wing of the school, a kitchen was available for the class to mash their potatoes, pour their cranberry sauce and stir and measure ingredients to bake their pies and cornbread from scratch Tuesday.

“I helped make pumpkin pie,” student Danny Warschauer said. “That was my favorite.”

When hosting the party Wednesday, student Emma Ford was there to greet incoming guests and other students took turns reading speeches which thanked their guests for attending.

While Danny read his thanks to Julie Meves, a support staff member in the speech and language department, he stopped in the middle of a sentence to say “Miss Julie… I love you.”

For future vocational training lessons, the students will decorate cookies and make hot cocoa during the holiday season.

Each month, the class typically takes at least two outdoor trips to practice safe walking by the roads, using traffic signals and navigating the community, Johnston said.

Meadow Park staff at the Thanksgiving meal said they were excited and honored to be a part of the inaugural event.

“I would love for this to be the start of an annual tradition at Meadow Park,” Johnston said. “Several attendees said they would remember this for a long time and that when they have rough days, they will remember the words the students said so eloquently to their mentors: ‘Thank you for helping us.’”