In anticipation of this week’s Thanksgiving holiday, one local school celebrated by making apple pies from scratch—with the help of a celebrity chef.

Last week, Bradenton's Visible Men Academy, a nonprofit charter school for boys in kindergarten through fifth grade, hosted Chef Marvin Woods. Woods is best known being the first chef to launch former First Lady Michelle Obama’s "Let’s Move!" cooking series, which was founded to help busy families create nutritious, affordable meals. Since then, Woods has used his platform to tour the country to teach kids about food. He's also written two books, Home Plate Cooking and The New Country Cooking, with a third one on the called All Good.

Woods is good friends with VMA board chair Naeima Frieson, who reached out to ask if he'd consider participating in Apple Pie Day, an annual autumn tradition. For the past several years, students and volunteers have gathered to make pies for kids to take home to bake on Thanksgiving.

This year, Woods added a new challenge: Teaching the students to make their own pie dough.

“None of these kids had made pie dough from scratch, and they loved it," he says. "They learned that it’s made with just four simple ingredients. Teaching them to measure the ingredients, mix the dough and work it is awesome. They love getting in there with their hands."

Woods encouraged the students to weigh in on the apple filling, too. "They tasted it and talked about what they should add to make it better," he says. "Everyone wanted more cinnamon, so we added more cinnamon. They were in charge and they loved it.

“One of the things I love about food is that it touches on history, geography, science and math,” he continues. “While making the pies, I worked with the kids on fractions. We talked about how many cups are in a pint, teaspoons in a tablespoon, and so on." The kids already knew those things, he says, but when they realized they were fractions, it clicked. 

While Woods’ primary passion is teaching about nutrition and how to make healthy adjustments, he says he wanted to focus on the foundation of the recipe so that the kids can think about the types of healthy tweaks they might want to make next year.

“It’s all about baby steps,” he says. “It’s amazing to see kids have these moments where they think they don’t like something because of preconceived ideas, but then try it and realize they actually do like it. That’s been the whole mission, getting them exposed to new things. Parent involvement also makes a huge difference. Kids eat healthy foods when they see their parents eating healthy foods, and they cook when the parents cook.”

While Apple Pie Day will surely continue, this is VMA's final year making pies at its 63rd Avenue campus. In January, the school is moving to 59th Street to share a campus with the girls-only charter school Just For Girls, and it's currently in the midst of a capital campaign to fund the move, which will cost around $2 million.

Although the two schools will share the property, Jackie Gehndyu, VMA's director of exceptional student education (ESE), says there won’t be any overlap in programming and that VMA will remain an all-boys school.

“When you have a class full of just boys, you can really focus on their needs, which include frequent movement and changing activities often," she says. "We want to embrace their energy and help them channel it to use appropriately."

Gehndyu hopes that with its new, more spacious campus, VMA will be able to grow by adding more availability for interested students and even more grade levels.

“We’re a neighborhood school and now that we’re expanding, it won’t just be for the neighborhood boys,” she says. “We have so many cool programs here. We welcome everyone from Manatee and Sarasota Counties, as long as we have room. We do our best to accommodate everyone.”

To learn more about Visible Men Academy, click here.