Pizza from scratch

A recent session delivered by Hospitality Trainer Sharyn Brown offered a window into what cookery learning can look like at its best.

Students began by making pizza dough and leaving it to prove, building an understanding of fermentation and timing that underpins much of cookery. After cleaning down their workstations, they moved outside to the school’s kitchen garden to harvest tomatoes, shallots, capsicum and zucchini.

Returning to the kitchen, students washed their hands, prepared their produce using correct knife techniques, and topped their individual pizzas. The pizzas went into the oven, and students waited to see the result of everything they’d grown, harvested and prepared.

It’s a session that quietly covers food safety, hygiene, knife skills, food production and teamwork, all within the context of something students genuinely want to eat.

When food production clicks, curiosity follows

Sharyn’s observation points to something important in VETDSS delivery: engagement through understanding. When students can see the connection between growing, preparing, preserving and presenting food, the subject stops feeling like a school subject and starts feeling like a real skill set.

Food preservation is another thread woven through the program. Whether it’s understanding how to store produce correctly or exploring broader preservation techniques, these concepts expand students’ sense of what a career in hospitality can involve. The industry is wide: restaurants, hotels, catering, cafes, clubs, cruise ships. The SIT20322 Certificate II in Hospitality opens the door to all of it.

Everything on the pizzas came out of the school garden that morning.

Spreading the benefits across the school

One of the most community-minded aspects of the Gilson College program is what happens to the produce after the Taster class is done with it. Rather than the harvest stopping at Year 9, it’s being shared with junior food students for use in their own practical sessions.

This cross-year contribution is a natural extension of the vocational values embedded in training: minimising waste, contributing to a team, and taking pride in what you produce. It also sends a quiet but meaningful message to Taster students: what you’re learning has real value, right now, for others.

A qualification that opens the whole industry

The SIT20322 Certificate II in Hospitality reflects the skills required by individuals working in hospitality settings, including restaurants, cafes, international hotels, clubs, pubs and catering operations. For secondary students, it’s an entry point into an industry that employs people across the world.

For students at Gilson College, it’s also becoming something else: a genuine shift in how they see themselves and what might be possible after school.

That kind of curiosity is exactly what VETDSS is designed to spark.

A program that puts students first, in and out of the classroom

The academy’s hybrid structure includes three timetabled sessions a week and two outside of school hours. In-class sessions cover theory, AFL skills and strength and conditioning. The outside-class sessions add the volume and intensity of a high-performance environment without displacing other subjects. IVET’s program has been thoughtfully woven throughout, with learning and assessment embedded rather than bolted on at the end.

Training loads are periodised across the season, so students are supported, not overloaded, during their club commitments. The result is a program that takes sport seriously and treats academic progression with the same care.

Opening doors students would not otherwise have

Beyond the IVET partnership, Josh has added a range of industry partners that strengthen the program further. The Essendon Football Club delivers on-site clinics and a Marvel Stadium Careers Day; the Calder Cannons provide talent pathways and a bridge to elite environments; and Life Saving Victoria delivers the Pool Lifeguard qualification.

These are not just logo partnerships. They give students direct exposure to careers in sport and recreation, strengthening the students’ learning journeys.

A program designed to run without its founder

From the beginning, Josh’s goal was to build something the school would own, not something that depended on one person to hold it together. Every session plan, delivery schedule and operational procedure was documented with a clear question in mind: if the coordinator changed tomorrow, what would the next person inherit?

Part of the answer is IVET. The Certificate III in Sport, Aquatics and Recreation is structured around a sport-agnostic core, which means the same qualification framework that underpins the AFL Academy can sit beneath a future basketball, netball or cricket program without rebuilding from scratch. A new sport needs a specialist trainer, not a new RTO partnership. That flexibility is built in from day one.

What started as one teacher’s idea has become a program the school can scale, the students can rely on, and a future coordinator can pick up and run with. The early signs are already there: students are engaging more seriously with their studies, partnerships are deepening, and the framework is ready to extend to other sports when the time comes.

That is what a well-designed VET program looks like: a teacher with a clear vision, an RTO that supports it, and a structure built to outlast both.