​Welcome to the Xcursion Risk Tips. These tips are designed to save you time, money, reduce risk, and improve safety for all of your programs. Today, we're going to look at students cooking. Phew, yes you probably just reel back from some certain experience that you've had out on a program where our kids cooked you something. Now, I've had both ends of this spectrum. Some kids well, you really wouldn't trust what they cook or what they put in that meal. However, other kids can cook so well. It is great to see them get involved and actually cook something.

I've come across schools and I've come across teachers who are really hesitant to allow kids to cook. But seriously, at what point do you let go and enable kids to take ownership and take responsibility and do something they really want to try? This is something that not a lot of kids get to do at home. So the opportunity to cook whilst on camp is really important and they love to try and impress you with their meals. There are a couple of risks involved in this and a couple of hazards. The two main ones that we want to look at are knives and fires.

Firstly, it's the preparation of the meal. It's cutting up everything on the cutting boards and making sure that they don't cut the veggies and themselves with the blunt knives. Now more often than not, you're going to find blunt knives on camps because you can't trust anybody with a sharp knife. Unfortunately, with a blunt knife, they're more risk of causing injuries, than sharp knives. Because the pressure that's applied to a blunt knife is far greater than the pressure you need to apply with a sharp knife. So at least have your knives slightly sharpened so that they're not totally blunt and can cause really really bad injuries.

One student I had on one of my programs, he managed to stab himself in the webbing of his hand with a knife. How we managed to do that? I don't know. But he was cutting up the vegetables and just came up to me and said, "Oh Sir, Sir I've cut myself." I was like, "How, how did you do that?"
I mean, it was an impressive cut and we managed to apply pressure and patch it up ok. But I was astounded. But basically what he had done was he had pushed so much pressure on the knife, flicked it off the vegetable and skew it himself in the hand. Now that's one part of it. You really do need to monitor and supervise effectively when the kids are cutting things up.

Once they're all cut up, the next thing is the fire. Or most likely you're going to get something a Trangia. Now a Trangia for those who don't know, is this little stove and it's got an alcohol burner in the middle, and you pop it in and put your pot on and away it goes. Many schools I've worked at, many programs I've seen to begin with, didn't actually contain these fires or didn't monitor this effectively. This is the next really critical hazard that you need to manage effectively for when students are cooking. So what you want to do is set up what we call it a Trangia circle. Now a Trangia circle can be done just with a small bit of rope and you put a big circle right around and the pots go in there, nobody or nothing else goes in there and your fuels go well away from where you are. So with that in mind that you have your contained cooking circle, and you only limit the number of kids near the cooking circle. You don't need three kids cooking in one pot. You need one student cooking in one pot. So, limit the numbers around the cooking circle and actively monitor this. Don't cook your own dinner at this point in time.

One great solution is get one of the kids to cook. This has worked many many times that I've often had a lot of student meals because they've offered to cook for me. At this point in time, you don't want to be cooking because you need to be supervising what's going on and monitoring that fire circle and monitoring the way in which it's being conducted. This is critically important to reduce the risk of burns and scalds, which are some of the highest numbers of injuries that you get when you have kids cooking on programs. So you monitor that. They cook you dinner and you get to stand around drinking a cup of coffee whilst you watch them cook your dinner. What's not to like about that?

One of the problems I've seen is when staff are cooking their own dinners is that they don't have that level of supervision. They become too focused on their own meal and at the end of the day, you're the leader, you're looking after these kids, you can eat later. So, use that opportunity to try some kids cooking and that the reaction that you get when they cook something for you and you are able to share a meal with them is really good and it's all part of that bonding experience. It's all part of that journey of a camp. That way you can develop rapport with your kids in such a unique setting.
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So two main risks for cooking with kids, it's not the taste, it's not the flavor, it's not what they cook although sometimes they can burn things and it's horrible, but we won't go there. But the two main hazards are cutting with knives, prepping meals, and also the cooking circle or the Trangia circle. If you can effectively supervise these two, then you've seriously reduced the risk of something going wrong on your program, and the kids are learning from this experience by cooking meals for themselves.

​Catering is a really important part of your program. Any camp, school excursion or overseas school trip needs to have good food, with considerations made for any dietary needs. This could be based upon allergies, religion or preference.
 
The complexity of this can, at times, get a bit overwhelming. Some are justified, some are ridiculous and indulgent. The ongoing challenge is however, to ensure you push through the fact that some parents push stupid diets on their children and focus on the fact that getting the catering right for your critical needs students is vitally important.
 
For most students, it’s fairly clear and obvious that they’re a vegetarian, they can’t eat nuts or seafood or whatever the case may be and you simply provide this information to your camp catering team to sort out. However, it’s important not to set and forget this, as things can always slip through the cracks and when they do… you can have some of the most dangerous situations on hand.
 
On one program I was running, we were using a hardtop catered camp site for part of it. I walked in to have dinner and saw that it was a pasta dish with a tomato sauce. However, as I looked a bit closer, I saw some tiny prawns in it. I quickly looked around the room as this was not on the menu plan and one of our students was anaphylactic to shellfish. I spotted him down the back of the dining room, having just sat down to eat. I dashed down and immediately said not to eat the pasta. Despite being old enough to have some level or self-regulation, he hadn’t seen the prawns in the food. Thankfully, he hadn’t eaten anything and I arranged for another meal.
 
It turned out that the cook had a bag of spare prawns in the freezer and just thought he’d use that to ‘bulk-up’ the dish. The potential consequences of this could have been fatal. Even if you’re really careful with food allergies, it’s important that someone is monitoring this and not just ticking that box before the program and thinking it will have sorted itself out.
 
Another camp provider I was working with was completely dysfunctional and couldn’t understand dietary needs at all. This was obvious from the signs they had placed on the servery. ‘46 normal’. It wasn’t just the fact that they had odd signs, but then they hadn’t actually catered for any dietary needs at all, so the not-normal were given salad. I ended up having to go out at the last minute and buy some supplies because the caterers were so incompetent. Needless to say they were never used again. However, once again, if you don’t have someone actively monitoring this for your program, you can end up with all sorts of nightmares.
 
Even in-house, if you’re employing people who are supposedly well-experienced in food preparation and catering for school groups, this is no guarantee that things will go well. Once place I was working the cook (really couldn’t!) kept sending out meals raw. Now a raw hamburger is one thing, but when you have raw chicken breasts coming out for dinner, it’s obvious they’ve got no idea and time to replace them.
 
Whilst it’s often tempting for schools to contract out their camps to other people to organise and run for them, you’re still ultimately responsible for the health and safety of your students, so someone should be overseeing and observing meals, snacks and drinks throughout the day. In doing so, you can save yourself from far greater problems that can result from bad catering and a lack of attention to this part of your program. You don’t have to be over the top or hyper vigilant, but you do need to have your finger on the pulse as to what everyone is eating.

​If some of your providers can’t cater, or the level of complexity of students’ food needs is too great for you to adequately cater for them, its important to have this conversation with parents and find an alternate solution.
 
In my experience. if you have someone who needs a specific brand or exact item from a gourmet food store, then it’s probably best to document in your program information that some cases might require self-catering. I’ve had this both for extreme allergies and extreme parenting. The extreme parenting and ‘fussy eater’ scenario aside, if you have serious concerns about major food allergies and triggers, then just work with the parents to provide the food themselves. We’ve done this on many occasions and have also provided separate cooking equipment for those students to ensure there’s no cross-contamination.
 
At times, this is a challenging part of running the program. It doesn’t have to be and putting those plans in place early, talking with parents and the students, as well as monitoring what’s being provided, will help ensure those catering nightmares are well and truly kept at bay. 

​The Fushimi Shrine in Kyoto is one of the most iconic temples in Japan. Its distinctive path of orange gates wind their way up the side of a mountain, which is revered as sacred. Along this path of gates as it winds it way up the mountain, are a series of small shrines and grave stones and of course shops for everyone along the way.
 
The visit to this amazing site was both cultural and outdoor ed in its experience. At the very base is a market place filled with food stalls which emanate a wonderful aroma of hot Japanese delicacies. There are many girls dressed up in traditional Japanese Kimonos and if you really want, you can rent one in the many rental shops nearby. Despite the crowds, it was well worth getting something to eat here before going into the temple. I managed to find a beef skewer that I could afford. The standard ones were 500yen (about AUD$6.00). However the wagyu ones were 2,000yen (about $24.00). As meat on a stick goes, $24 is a bit out of my league, so I went for the cheaper option. However, the food’s not limited to this and you can get all sorts of things on a stick, from weird dessert like buns to octopus that look as if they’ve just had a visit from Vlad The Impailer. 

Before going there, I hadn’t really read up much on it, so I thought that it was a few gates that arched around in a bit of a circle. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The gates do loop around, but they go all the way up the mountain and back. A truly remarkable feat of design.

The place was crowded and of course everyone was trying to get a photo (or fifty) right at the start. The noise of the bustling crowd really made it hard to appreciate the significance and wonder of this site. I shuffled through the crowd, which once inside the gates, there was little chance of getting away from, until the crowd popped out at another temple and some shops. Looking at a ‘You Are Here!’ type map, I suddenly realised that this was just the beginning and the gates went on and on, all the way up the mountain. I continued to follow the crowd up the hill as it got steeper and the path turned into steps. Rising up to the next intersection, the path split and the crowd suddenly thinned out. Obviously, people had already taken enough photos of themselves with the orange gates that the thought of hiking to the top was too much for them to bear.
 
However, for me the experience of the temple and the sacred mountain only began at this point. There’s something very serene about walking through bamboo scattered forests and the bright orange contrast of the gates. There were hardly any people up here to ruin the experience with endless selfies, although I do admit to taking a few at the top. The absence of the crowd also meant that I was able to see more of the amazing details and the work that’s gone into building such a phenomenal structure.

​Once I reached the top, which was gated by some rather unhappy looking fox-like statutes, I had a look around the highest shrine before descending into another gulley. As I walked down the many steps, suddenly a wind rippled through the bamboo. It was directional, by which I mean it was concentrated above my head in a very narrow band. You could imagine in years gone by, those making a pilgrimage to the mountain could have seen something like this as a passing dragon spirit. Hopefully the happy dragon type from ‘The Never Ending Story,’ rather than the angry, greedy type from ‘The Hobbit.’

​Regardless of this, it was a wonderful moment as the golden coloured autumn leaves were dislodged from their branches and glided down to the ground around me.
 
Continuing back down, the closer I came to the intersection, the greater the number of people there were until I finally popped out, just past the enormous frog shrine, back at the main temple at the base of the mountain.
 
This was both a great hike and a fascinating cultural experience. If you’re ever in Kyoto, this is a must, but wear your hiking boots as the real experience is only to be found beyond where most people give up. 

This week, since it’s the new year holiday period, I thought I'd write more about adventures and well nothing about work. After a massive past month, I managed to jump on a plane and fly to Japan. I love flying and with my favourite TV show, now movie, Absolutely Fabulous on the entertainment system, the movie was just the right length to have dinner and then fall asleep. Having not stopped for weeks, it wasn't hard at all to doze off and wake when the stewards were serving breakfast!
 
After a muesli and a couple of espressos, I was all ready to go. Another thing I love about travelling is the fact that one moment I can be in stinking hot weather, the next I step into winter. It's not quite like going into your cupboard and discovering Narnia, but not that far off it either!
 
Shuffling through immigration seems to get faster and faster as they improve technology to check people through. The biggest hassle however, was trying to work out how to make all the connections to get to my destination. The Japanese I did at school hardly prepared me for any of this. It came down to a couple of options. 1. I could wait 4 hours and catch a bus directly to my hotel (boring). 2. Get a mono-rail, bullet train and bus to my destination. Far more interesting… and challenging! Whilst I already knew of these two options and had it planned out in my mind what I needed to do to make this happen, it's not until you're faced with a ticket machine that even when in English Mode doesn't make sense and no ticket sales desks in sight.
 
I managed to fudge my way through and buy a ticket. I wasn't sure if it were the right one, but hey it kept working everytime I stuck it in a machine, so I guessed I was on the right track. (The track being a monorail, it was kind of hard not to be!)
 
I made my way to Tokyo Central Station and from here ran around madly trying to find the next connection. It was the bullet train! I again did battle with the ticket machine that had way too many options that didn't make any sense at all. However, I finally succeeded in getting it to spit out a ticket, yet when I went to the gate, it turns out it wanted two tickets. So after the guard said something I didn't understand except for the word two, I went back and got a second ticket (which was apparently slightly different somehow). Placing both tickets in the machine at once, it worked! With a strange feeling that this ticketing process was somehow inefficient and un-Japanese, I raced up to the platform as the train was minutes from leaving.
 
This was my first time on a bullet train and it was amazing! The sleek design, the aerodynamics, the whole train was awesome. I can't for the life of me work out why Australia hasn't built any lines for them. The smooth pace at which they accelerated and slowed mean that you were never thrown about. Although I have to admit I was slightly disappointed that leaving the station I wasn't nailed to the back of my seat by 5Gs of thrust. Now that would be cool.
 
Seeing the sheer size and spread of Tokyo was something itself. The high-rise apartments, the industrial areas, the sprawl of the city seemed to go on forever. As the urban centre became more distant, the train sped up hitting over 280kph! The world flashed by and in the distance, I could see the snow capped Mt Fuji dominating the landscape.
 
The train ride was around 1.5hrs and as the towns became more rural, the design of the building changed and there was some great tranquility about this transition.
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Reaching Nagano (venue of the 1998 Winter Olympics), the bullet train ride ended. Stepping off the headed carriage, I was snapped back into winter by the frosty chill in the air. From here, I transitioned onto a bus for the final leg of the journey. As the bus wound its way through the rural townships, light snow began to fall, getting heavier and heavier as we ascended into the mountains.
 
After another hour and a bit on the bus, we reached the township of Hakuba, a great town now deep with snow. I explored town for a couple of hours buying and eating some random foods which looked like one thing but tasted like something else. One such food looked like a cream bun and turned out to have some sort of black bean mash within it! Ha! It's always worth trying new foods and I eventually stumbled on something I liked for lunch.
 
Going anywhere new for the first time is always filled with uncertainty, but that's what makes it so exciting. I don't know what's going to happen next, but to an extent it doesn't matter, as enjoying the journey and everything that happens along the way is the most important thing. It's way too easy to get so wrapped up in work and ‘regular’ life that you miss out on the opportunities to travel, to explore and to experience new things. So over the Christmas break, think about somewhere new you'd like to go or something new you’d like to try. Ask yourself where your next adventure will be and go and book it in the next hour! Whatever it is, don't delay, don't defer it, make it happen and have an awesome adventure whatever it may be!​

There’s always a lot to think about when preparing for an outdoor ed camp. Assuming you know where you’re going and what you’re doing sorted, then it’s time to prepare the finer details.
 
For most teachers, this is where it can become overwhelming. Often the feeling is, “I want to run an enjoyable and safe trip… but where do I start?”
 
The first thing to do is develop your risk management plan. Many other things will simply fall into place once this is done. Although the bane of many teachers’ existence, a good risk management plan can save you considerable time and effort down the line.
 
When building your plan, look at your daily routine and work out what the key risks are for each activity and how you will accept, eliminate or mitigate these risks. You’ll need to consider things such as time of year (season), weather, temperatures, location and emergency exit points. Add to this the specific risks for each activity in those locations at that time of the year and you’ll start to build a picture of what your key risks are and how you’re going to address them.
 
With your risk management strategy created, remember, this is a living document not a copy and paste job which just makes up part of the ‘annoying paperwork.’ All staff need to be aware of risks and mitigation strategies and be prepared to react and respond if and when it’s needed.
 
The next step is to sort permission notes, get updated medicals and provide a student packing list with all the items they need to bring (and things they shouldn’t). Have a detailed plan ready to go before you send this out to parents. You’re bound to get lots of questions so the more detailed the itinerary you can provide upfront, the better.
 
For the equipment list, clearly specify quantity and quality of what’s required. Whilst I know some parents might not be able to supply this, as a matter of safety, it’s important that you’re able to cater for any shortfall. One of the most important pieces of equipment is a set of thermals. Even in warmer months, it’s good safety practice to carry some thermals in case of emergency and if you’re running an autumn or winter camp, it’s essential that all students have a set. The reason being (not just to support our great wool industry), hypothermia is always a significant environmental risk due to wet and windy conditions in Australia.
 
With permissions notes, medicals and gear all sorted, it’s time to brief everyone! This is often overlooked, but it’s vitally important to run a pre-camp briefing for staff and students. This goes back to pro-active risk management. Set the scene, set the expectations and build the excitement for camp. After all, you’ve just spent weeks preparing something very special it’s now time to tell everyone about it! Showing images from a previous camp and location on a map, is a great way to put into perspective some of the experiences they’re about to have.
 
With all this done, it’s down to the last items and you’re ready to go! First Aid kits, spare Asthma Puffer, spare EpiPen, any medications, groups lists, medical summaries, food and you’re good to go! By the way… did anyone book the buses?

For some strange, inexplicable reason a lot of people love cooking shows. I guess it’s the voyeuristic nature of people wanting to see others under pressure, being shoved outside their comfort zones, yelled at, fail, recover (or not) and it’s ok, because it’s not you! I’m not here to judge the moral compass of these shows and their viewers, as some people love the spotlight and the pressure and it can indeed fulfil an important desire in their life. However, what happens when you swap out the adults and replace them with children?
 
Cooking is a fantastic activity in which kids can be involved. The sooner you can get children helping out with cooking, making cookies, cakes or meals, the better. It’s a great activity to be doing, giving children the opportunity to measure, follow recipes, experiment and taste a range of different flavours. Added to this, it enables them to be more independent sooner as cooking is a skill to which many children are not exposed until they leave home. Despite the mess, the benefits of spending time with your kids cooking can be wonderful and good bonding time. Ultimately, they can then cook for you and  that makes your life way easier!
 
With all these amazing benefits of cooking for kids, someone had to come along and corrupt it. As I was channel surfing the other day, I came across one of these cooking shows, but for kids. It was the stupid intense part of the show where they have all the children lined up, standing nervously. Some boring douchebag judges are sitting in judgement on how well the children baked a cake, making them feel increasingly anxious, as they provide their expert criticism of each cake and deciding who will stay and who will go.
 
Whilst I’m a huge fan of honest feedback for kids and it’s healthy to let them try things, fail, help them to understand why it didn’t work and then try again. However, this sort of intense public display of judgement and failure is totally unhealthy and in my opinion, emotionally destructive. Why parents let their kids be subjected to this I have no idea. If you’re an adult on one of these shows, you’ve made a conscious decision to be on there and compete. As an adult, you have the ability (generally speaking) to make rational, informed decisions and understand the risks and rewards that come with being on a TV show with endless armchair critics, ready to jump on Twitter or whatever else and ridicule and blast you for everything you do. However, as a child you have no idea and as a parent, well… you’re idiots for exposing your kids to such an experience.
 
With mental health issues on the rise amongst young people, there’s absolutely no reason to unnaturally expose them to high levels of stress and anxiety for a tiny bit of public exposure, which even if they won a TV cooking competition, any benefit will quickly fade into insignificance. You only have to look at the trail of destruction left in the wake of childhood actors such as River Phoenix, Cory Haim and countless others to see how false the notion of fame and fortunate from a childhood experience on TV or the big screen really is.
 
It’s important that we let kids try new things, challenge themselves and do things together with mum and dad such as cooking to help build their experience, relationships and confidence in life. However, it’s also just as important to protect kids from such awful soul-destroying experiences such as reality TV. There’s plenty of time in their lives as they grow and mature to do something stupid like this. However, whilst still a child, it’s important to be protected from an experience that’s merely a shallow marketing exercise created and run by people who are purely interested in the massive amount of money that comes with TV productions such as this, not the welfare of the kids. At the end of the day, why not just turn the TV off and spend some quality time baking cookies with the kids.
 

I recently read an article about a teacher writing a letter home to a parent telling them not to bring chocolate cake to school. In terms of earth shattering issues, this is rather low on the scale of importance in the world today, however, still worth a mention.
 
As a teacher, you see all sorts of weird and wonderful things that kids bring to school for lunch. You smell the amazing aroma of exotic spices and foods from all over the world in soups, pastas, noodles, wraps, burritos and even sandwiches. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
 
My question to the parents is, why didn't you send enough for me too? Some of the lunches I see are amazing and I just wish someone would pack that for me. In comparison, the classic cheese and salami sandwich doesn't seem to cut it anymore.
 
Whilst I'm a very strong believer that parents should stay out of trying to tell teachers how to teach, with one important exception to the rule, schools should stay out of kids’ lunch boxes.
 
For some reason, many schools have decided that telling parents what they can and can't give their kids for lunch will solve countless ‘dietary’, ‘allergy’ and ‘lifestyle’ problems. Much of this has been born out of two different concerns. The first one is the increasingly prevalent nut allergies, the second, childhood obesity.
 
For the first concern, I completely agree with very black and white rules. Any school's stance on maintaining a nut free campus is a great idea. The number of kids today who have a potentially fatal allergy to nuts is alarming and keeping the campus nut free is a smart way of reducing this risk and protecting the community from what can be a confronting and horrendous ordeal.
 
If someone has an anaphylactic reaction, untreated, their airways close up and they can be dead within minutes. Even if it's treated with an epi-pen, they must get to hospital as fast as possible and there's still no guarantee of recovery.  
 
Now anything which can kill someone in minutes needs to be taken seriously and parents should respect this decision on banning nuts. You're not going to put a brown snake in your kid’s bag which could bite someone and have the exact same result of a fast and painful death, so don't give your kids nuts to take to school.
 
On the other hand, in some schools, this concern has gone way too far and slowly but surely other foods have been added to a pointless list of contraband, driven by a misguided notion that if you ban lollies, chocolates and cakes, you will miraculously solve the societal problem of childhood obesity. It just doesn't work that way. Unlike an anaphylactic reaction, being fat won't kill you in 5-10 mins and the reality is most kids will burn off their cake fuelled calories, as they run around the playground.
 
At the end of the day, unless the school wants to provide lunch for everyone themselves, then they need to trust parents to make informed choices about what they're feeding their own children. If the concern is really about healthy eating, then the solution isn’t telling parents what they can and can't give their kids for lunch, because as soon as you tell people they can't have something or do something, it just makes them want to do it more.
 
If teachers have time to write letters home about the evils of chocolate cake or otherwise to tell parents not to let their kids have this food or that food for lunch, then they seriously have too much time on their hands and need something better to do. There's a reasonable and rational argument for nut free schools, but ultimately, schools need to balance this sort of real risk with a bit of common sense, so they don't start overreaching and trying to exercise control to the point of stupidity. 

This week, I'm going to depart slightly from the usual themes of adventure and risk management and talk about something that's kind of related, but at the same time, more to do with fitness and perceptions of health and well-being, which is technically what I'm always talking about too.
 
Anyway, I was lined up at a Starbucks. (I apologise deeply to my regular café haunts,. I'm loathed to admit that I was getting coffee here, but I needed an espresso and fast. Thinking of which, doesn’t espresso mean fast anyway? Then again you know I don't speak Spanish!) Ok, so back to the story. I was in an airport in the US getting coffee and the lady in front of me, who looked as though she could lose some weight, ordered a skinny mocha, but before placing the order, she asked if they had that nice whipped double cream. They did have the cream, which she was very happy with, but at the same time she insisted it had to be skinny milk. She wasn't joking or being sarcastic, she wanted a skinny mocha layered with double cream!!!
 
Being the second week of January, it felt like this was a New Year’s resolution gone seriously wrong. This is a classic lack of application and thought. I saw it another time when I was out shopping. A guy at the supermarket was sitting on the bench next to his trolley. It was filled with all sorts of processed food and very little fruit and veg. He was talking to another guy next to him complaining how he tried so hard and couldn't lose weight. Yet here he was with a pie in one hand and soft drink in the other. There are some mysteries in life that will never be solved!
 
Now who would I be if I simply criticised people and didn't understand their problem. However, I do! I won't go into the whole story now, but a few years ago, I was terribly overweight, to the tune of 30kg. I'd been like this for sometime but decided I was sick of looking the way I did and having no energy. What was I to do though? I could sit and complain about it and well… that didn't seem to change anything. The task felt a little overwhelming though. I knew how much I weighed, and I knew how much I wanted to weigh, but there was still this massive thing in the middle called action and to take action required willpower, something many people just don't seem to find enough of. 

I was way gone on those scales almost hitting 90kg, when I should have been around 60kg. It was for me to do something about it, or I'd be overweight forever! As with most people and ‘new things,’ the first day I was full of energy and ready to go! I walked down to Narrawallee Beach (which is about 1.3kms long). After stretching, I started running. I thought I was going really well. I'd made it to the rocks (200m) then over them (210m) and down the main stretch of the beach. Gasping and panting for air I pulled up. I was completely wrecked, dripping with sweat and my head was throbbing. I’d made it… half way. So at about 650m I was done. I couldn't go any further.
 
At this point, I could have gone one of two ways. I could have given up and started drinking skinny milk to make me feel as if I were possibly doing something to lose weight, or I could try again the next day! So given the fact that I hate the taste of skinny milk, I tried again the next day! With my body still aching from the day before, I'd set the goal of making it to the other end of the beach without stopping. ¾ of the way along I wanted to give up, but I pushed through this pain and kept going right to the end. It wasn't a record breaking time, but time didn't matter, I'd made it to the end and that was all I cared about!
 
Each day and week I pushed myself a little further and a little harder. Now it was to the end of the beach and back, then it was 1.5x then 2x then out to the next beach along. I started feeling better and better and had more and more energy as the weeks and months rolled by.
 
If I'd taken the easy option of pretending to diet, and do no exercise then I'd be in the same place as the lady with the skinny mocha with double thick whipped cream, or the pie and soft drink guy! Don't get me wrong, I’m no health fanatic by any means and eat my fair share of chocolate, whipped cream and doughnuts, but I balance this out with exercise and the willpower not to make excuses for my situation.
 
In the long run (which it was), I lost 30kg and went from not even being able to run 1km without near collapse to running the Canberra Half Marathon Twice and my own personal marathon once!
 
To achieve this however, I didn't do anything special other than put one foot in front of the other and kept going until I'd reached my goal. So if you want to achieve something or make a difference in your life, take that first step and the next and the next, even if it's a massive goal and for me,shedding 1/3 of my body weight was. It all starts with those first few steps and the willpower to keep going.
 
So don't go putting whipped cream on your skinny mocha. You're just pretending you're doing something! But use your willpower, drive and determination instead. Turn your life around and if you do run a marathon, you can have whipped cream on anything you like! 

Managing medical concerns at school and on excursions is one of my biggest worries as a teacher! Anaphylaxis is at the top of that list, since a reaction can be almost instant from the allergen and has a cascading effect. This means the longer you leave it, the more difficult it is to recover. However, despite this serious concern, it just means effective strategies need to be in place to ensure preventative measures are the number 1 priority.

In outdoor education, we usually run our programs a considerable distance from emergency medical care. As a result, this adds an additional layer of risk to any trip away. However, rather than worry about this and feel as though it’s too risky to take kids away, my focus has always been on effective preparation and management. This ensures that the chances for an anaphylactic reaction becomes so low, it’s not an issue.

If a student’s medical profile is flagged with an anaphylactic allergy, I’ll phone home and talk to mum and dad. What I need to know when I call is what are the specific triggers? Can they have foods which might contain traces of the allergen? When was the last reaction and what happened? Even though this information might be in the medicals, I prefer the first hand information from parents, so I can effectively brief my staff. I also want to know how well their son or daughter manages their allergy. Are they aware of what can happen? Are they aware of what foods they can and can’t have? This information is vital in helping provide teachers with the best management strategies in the field.

As an example, on one program, I had 247 students out in the field for a week long camp. 11 of the students had allergies which could result in an anaphylactic reaction. Based upon the information from the parents, and the fact some activities were hours away from emergency care, I carefully placed students with the highest needs in the closest proximity to emergency healthcare facilities. In one of the extreme cases, given the number of allergens that the student was affected by, I asked his mum to provide and pack the week’s food in an esky for her son and I provided a clean stove which was specifically for his personal use.
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At the end of the day, it about clear channels of communication between parents, teachers and the child. Even though all staff are trained in first aid and anaphylaxis treatment, effective preparation and prevention is far more important. For every activity we do, we go armed with a list of dietary requirements and only shop according to each individual excursion. We don’t plan meals months in advance to save time. It’s about providing the best meal options for each individual group. This way, we’re prepared and able to ensure we provide a safe environment for every child and a wonderful memorable experience away from school.
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Food on camps is tricky, but not in the sense that it's hard to do well, there's just so many considerations when you're catering for a diverse school group. Added to this, you often don't know the kids very well. Before camp we do a lot of work preparing for any group and no two camps are the same. To begin with, we look at medical risks and dietary needs. What concerns are there? Do we have kids with allergies? Will some additives make them sick? Will bread and milk cause them to be ill? Can they eat meat? Is it the right sort of meat? Are there any other foods are of concern?

Having catered for so many groups on camps and residential programs, one of the key concerns was that everything has to be ‘normalised.’ Even though I might’ve been catering and cooking for a number of different dietary needs, because they’re kids, I never want anything to stand out or be remarkably different. The last thing I want to hear is a whiney toned, “Why do they get that?!” So if I was cooking burritos for example (which kids love), I'd cook a variation of the burrito for everyone to enjoy. Some have mince, some have chicken, some have tofu, some have beans. Some have tortillas, some have gluten free tortillas, some prefer just to have it on the plate!
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Regardless of the mix of ingredients and the time that goes into this, the most important thing from my point of view is every student’s well-being and part of that is making sure they don’t feel ‘different’ a meal times. I’ve been to far to many venues that provide vastly different meals for the kids, making them feel left out and even isolated due to their dietary needs. I won’t have any of that on the camps I run and it’s not unreasonable to expect the same! To be honest, I love buying different foods when I go shopping. I think of all the cool combinations I can do for pizzas, curries and salads just to name a few! Whatever the menu is, I just love wandering around and searching for the best combo to make sure my one meal, can be eaten by all! This does take time, but once you’ve got an idea of a meal plan, each time you have a student with special dietary needs, it’s now only a matter of checking the plan and grabbing the right ingredient!