Pre-planning
When planning the programme for her Year 13 class Kate figured she had to find a way of engaging her students and have them recognise technology could lead to a range of satisfying, secure, and relatively well paid careers. Lack of career opportunities (along with the desire to travel and study) sees many of Hawke's Bay's young adults leave the region. Many do not return. As a result, the region has fewer 20 to 30-year-olds than the national average. And according to Career Services, of the young adults that do stay or return, only 5% have a formal university-level qualification; half the New Zealand average. Kate reasoned the best way of having her students recognise where technology could take them - into jobs at home (or anywhere in the world for that matter) that don't flux with the seasons - was not for her to tell them but to have somebody from industry come into the classroom and show them. But if the exercise was to be more than vocational guidance, it had to provide for real educational outcomes as defined by the curriculum. Input from outside the classroom had to help the students achieve these outcomes.
Kate worked with food technologists from Heinz Wattie's to help establish a suitable programme. Wattie's, or more correctly Heinz Wattie's (the company is now part of the global HJ Heinz group) was founded in Hastings in 1934 and is still plays a commanding role in the region's economy. Of the company's three production centres in New Zealand; two are in Hastings - Tomoana, and King Street. (The other is in Christchurch.) Heinz Wattie's employs almost 600 people, and up to 1,000 seasonal staff each year.
The contact with Heinz Wattie's was initially by chance. Rebecca Gore, a local member of the New Zealand Institute of Food Science and Technology (NZIFST) happened to visit a Havelock North High School open evening. As a result, she set up a meeting with representative members of NZIFST and the school's Technology Department. From that point on Jenny Dee and Futureintech's Angela Christie have helped build relationships between Food Technology ambassadors and Hawke's Bay schools.
Heinz Wattie's Food Technologist Sandra Chambers represented the company and agreed to act as a client for the Y13 class. Sandra put Kate in touch with Rachel Johns, a Heinz Wattie's product development technologist, who undertook to help with the Year 13 class.
Kate then set about developing a course that included Rachel's input. As a foundation, she built on the material she had built up over the preceding two years. In her first year at HNHS, Kate taught a unit on the theory and practice of preserving. It was a natural choice, she says, given that the Hawke's Bay region is New Zealand's largest horticulture growing region (along with Canterbury) and exports 50% of the country's pipfruit. The focus of the course was making a product from boysenberries; a choice dictated, at least in part, by the availability of the fruit at the beginning of the school year.
The following year, Kate had her students work with a local client who was in the business of producing gourmet natural preserves. After gaining a feel for the business and its products by a class visit, the class was asked to develop a product suitable for sale through the business. The brief threw up at least one unanticipated challenge: many of the students had little or no appreciation of what a gourmet product was. Class research and discussion resulted in a set of criteria being defined. The outcome was a spread of fruit-based relishes, fruit pastes and jams. (Kate's favourite was a hazelnut and feijoa jam.)
Kate calls the 2006 Year 13 unit she built on this foundation Food Hawke's Bay. It's part of the Year 13 programme which includes assessment of Home Economics and Technology achievement standards. The Year 13 students also do one unit standard - Creative Meal Preparation. Kate believes the balance is a good one.
"It makes in interesting having the technology in there as well."
