Super volunteer Peter Arnott retires

Collingwood College has said farewell to dedicated volunteer Peter Arnott, who retired this month after 13 years of supporting the school’s Kitchen Garden Program. Kitchen Specialist Desley Insall has written this lovely letter of gratitude to Peter …

Dear kitchen garden community,

Please raise your kitchen and garden implements (safely of course), and your baskets of seasonal harvest, to celebrate the valuable contribution that Peter Arnott has made to food education in Australia with his more than 13 years of volunteering in the Kitchen Garden Program at Collingwood College.

Peter retired on 20 July to move to Tasmania to be close to his children and grandchildren.

In Peter’s quiet, understated way, he will shrug off the limelight. However, I know it will be an enormously emotional goodbye for him, as it will be for me, his many friends at Collingwood College and our wider kitchen garden community.

He is part of a loyal group of extraordinary people – not parents, but a wider cohort of community members – who (with Francis’s assistance) supported Stephanie's vision in developing a kitchen garden curriculum at our school all those years ago. His loyal support of our students, and me, in the Kitchen Garden Program cannot be underestimated. It helped our Program be what it has now become: an embedded, loved and rich curriculum within our school.

For those who have not met Peter, he has been a stalwart at Collingwood College for more than 13 years, assisting at every school or Program fundraiser and media or political event, championing kitchen garden education.

Peter is an ex-teacher and Principal who has volunteered one to two days in the Kitchen Garden Program since its early beginnings as a pilot program funded through the Education Department’s Innovation Commission.

He has a great love for maths and supported, for many years, our school’s numeracy program for primary school students by working with our Leading Numeracy Teacher.

He had also worked with teachers such as Bianca, Lara, Kerry, Sormeh, and many others in the lower primary years, by supporting their aims in developing our Reggio Emilia-inspired Australian program at Collingwood College.

Peter’s love of learning was always evident. He gently supported individual students in their literacy needs by encouraging them on their own personal learning journey. His commitment to our school literacy support program was as generous as it was valuable to our students.

So yes, we could call Peter an unpaid staff member who has worked up to three days a week for over 13 years for the betterment of our students’ learning experiences!

Desley

Stephanie, Ange and the Kitchen Garden Foundation team would also like to thank Peter for his fantastic support of the Kitchen Garden Program, and wish him all the best for his retirement and move to Tasmania.

Inspired to volunteer in a kitchen garden program? Then find your local kitchen garden school or centre.