Our wonderful VCAL students prepared, cooked and served up a feast for the MLMC Old Collegians’ Business Breakfast held in McAuley Hall on Tuesday 19 June. It was a foggy 7am start but the guests soon warmed up and were welcomed by an impressive breakfast buffet comprising bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, toast, savoury muffins, apple and rhubarb muffins, croissants, cereals, fruit platters and even chocolate brownies.
Year 12 VCAL students Sarah Greene, Carla Papanastasiou and Charlie Kollosche had worked on the breakfast as part of their Bridges to Community project since March, and they combined their various skills and those of other students for the event. A percentage of ticket sales covered the costs of the food for the event, while the rest will go to help local families facing financial struggles.
The students had spent most of Monday preparing, from 8.30am to 4pm, and arrived at school on the Tuesday at 6am to be ready for the guests who were due to arrive from 7am. “We had to cater for 85 people,” Sarah said, adding that they had budgeted for a cost of $15 per head and place food orders three days before the event.
Prior to the event, they put in many hours creating an 'inspiration board' for everyone in the team to work from, planning and trialling the food, ordering the food and organising all of the decorations and the room set-up. Sarah was in charge of the event management. She said that she hopes to continue studies in this field next year. Carla was responsible for kitchen operations. Charlie is interested in beauty therapy, which she admitted had little to do with a hospitality project, but said she wanted to “help out” and she still used her “arty side”.
The trio organised for fellow students to create the timber grazing table platters for displaying the food, with Charlie arranging the hot and cold food and making sure the colours flowed, while others helped by serving coffees during the event. The girls asked the College maintenance team for a tree branch, which they spray painted and added lights to for decoration, while Rosalee Di Francesco did the floral table arrangements. They collectively said the biggest thing they learned from the project was time management, along with teamwork and how best to incorporate the skills of the people involved.
The breakfast had two guest speakers, former Principal John Goodfellow and Old Collegian Laura Turner.
John may have recently retired after working as a teacher and school Principal for 54 years, but he is just as passionate as ever about the evolution of education. His speech focused on his firm belief that children need to become independent learners. “Schools of the future will be about the Christian ethos of teaching students to be humble and compassionate,” John said. He spoke about the opportunity to change the way we teach and to build a school with a more human role for teachers. “Children need a teacher to guide them, to love them, to encourage them, to understand them and to challenge them. They need to be less concerned with content and more concerned with personal development,” John said.
Laura Turner is award-winning journalist, drug reform advocate and an Old Collegian. One of the highlights of Laura's speech was the film clip of her colleague, popular Melbourne newsreader Peter Hitchener, announcing that Laura and her partner Dan were expecting twins. It was a positive ending to a heartfelt speech that delved into her career in broadcast journalism since graduating from MLMC in 2001, which took across the globe, all the while hiding the personal pain of her elder sister Skye’s struggles with drug addiction. Laura has gone on to become an advocate for drug law reform in Victoria. “I took the lessons of school with me: charity, mercy and kindness,” Laura said, adding that she always tries to apply those lessons.
