Eight OVMS students created a cookbook to raise money for a teacher facing a serious health crisis
Eight kindhearted Orchard Valley Middle School students, with the support of physical education teacher Wes Yamamoto, measured out their compassion, sprinkled on their generosity and stirred in their caring to create a one-of-a-kind cookbook called “The Loop Cookbook.”
The eighth-grade students, Kelsey Alexandre, Manon Bada, Nicholas D’Angelantonio, Jordan Farr, Kendall James, Megan Smith, Danielle Stuart and Aliena Thomas, will be selling the cookbook to benefit OVMS English teacher Travis Martin, who has been out on medical leave facing a serious health crisis. The students, none of whom personally know Martin or have ever sat in his class, felt compelled to act when learning of his story and struggle.
The students chose to title their cookbook “The Loop Cookbook” in tribute to Yamamoto, who agreed to mentor them on the project, noting his saying “You are either in the loop of kindness and community service, or you are not. It’s good to be connected, to be involved and to be in the loop.”
Soliciting recipes from their families, building teachers and staff, the students, all friends since sixth grade, divided the work on the project with some typing the recipes and others proofreading. They sent their finished product to a publisher for printing and spiral binding. The result is a polished and complete book that includes recipes for appetizers, meats, chicken, seafood, pasta, casseroles and desserts. In addition to acknowledging the origination of the recipe and its per-serving calorie content, the students added to each recipe a suggested song to listen to while partaking of the food, as well as a suggestion on how to remove excess calories after enjoying the creation.
“When we heard that one of our teachers was sick, we wanted to raise money for him,” James said. “We met a couple of times to discuss ideas of what we wanted to do. Someone brought up the idea of doing a cookbook, so we decided to do that.”
“We liked the idea of using a cookbook to bring families together to sit down and talk over a meal,” D’Angelantonio said. “We are excited to see Mr. Martin’s reaction since we don’t know him and he doesn’t know us. I think he will be overjoyed to find out that a group of kids did this for him.”
The sale of the 200 cookbooks, through the Changing Our World Project, will include help from a faculty dress-down day district-wide and any teacher who makes a $10 donation to the dress-down day also will receive a cookbook. Once the group has recouped the cost of printing, all additional monies will be donated to Martin. Should the demand be high, the group will consider a second run of the books to generate additional dollars to the cause.
The students are hopeful that the cookbook sales will not only generate money for the Martin family but will also fill them with joy during an otherwise sad time. They hope to present a check to Martin during their graduation ceremony, but they admitted that they already have benefited from uniting for this good cause.
“We are so happy and proud that we had a chance to be a part of this,” Alexandre said. “It is a wonderful experience to be able to start a group from sixth grade and be able to continue to fundraise and be a part of so many different projects. It’s really special.”
The cookbook comes highly recommended — especially the dessert section and Ron Lucarini’s submission of a “Romantic Dinner for Two” complete with his suggested musical selection of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”
To secure a copy of “The Loop Cookbook,” forward a $10 check, made payable to the Changing Our World Project, c/o Orchard Valley Middle School, 238 Pitman-Downer Road, Sewell, NJ 08080. For additional information, please contact Yamamoto at wyamamoto@wtps.org.
