I survived the end-of-the-year marathon
– phew!!
I have been collected ideas I wanted to
delve into in a blog post, but by the time I sit down every night, I
have been too wiped out to tackle them. The beauty of the lack of
snow this winter is that we didn't have any snow days, and I am
officially on summer vacation as of yesterday afternoon, which is
ridiculously early. Not that I'm complaining.
So here are some of my end of the year
thoughts on cooking and other food-related topics. I apologize in advance; this is a long post!
*Food is used to reward and to
celebrate. There's lots more to say about that, but I just wanted to
get it out there. Why? Is it a good idea? What are the benefits and
harms of this practice? I hope to involve my colleagues in dialogue
about this next year.
*For the past several years, I have
created an end of the year slide show for my students and have shown
it on the last day of school. It's one of those one-more-thing
projects that are much more fun to work on than correcting the last
set of writing pieces or digging into report cards. This year it was
no surprise to discover that 60%-70% of the pictures were related to
cooking projects. When we watched the slide show the other day, there
were several times where I heard things like, “Oh yeah, gumbo. That
was good!”
We had memorable experiences through cooking, and
hopefully those experiences impacted both kids' willingness to try
new things and a connection with whatever we were studying. I can't
know for sure what each child will take away from their year of
cooking, but as a teacher, you never do know for sure what parts of
the curriculum kids absorb and keep. One idea I am kicking around is
some sort of entrance and exit interview about cooking and foods so
that I can track changes in kids' thinking.
*You can't talk about food without
talking about food-related waste. In the wake of the plate waste
project, many ideas have come up for leadership projects our class
could take on next year including building a compost pile on school
grounds and finding simple ways to track food waste, report on it,
and challenge our school community to waste less. But based on an
experience that happened at our school's end of year picnic, our
leadership may start on the first day of school.
We were off school grounds having field
days and a picnic, and I went through the line for barbeque after
most of the kids had already been through. By the time I finished
eating, most had cleaned up and frolicked off in one direction or
another. Another staff member and I hit the trash can at the same
time and saw the piles of recyclable milk bottles mixed in with the
trash. Another adult said she'd just seen a recycling bin and went to
get it so we could pull some of the cartons out. A third adult said
she could have used the watermelon rinds for her chickens. Long story
short, I soon found myself up to my elbows digging through the trash,
sorting out the compostables and recyclables.
One person perfectly articulated what
I've always thought about picnics. “It's like we say, 'We're having
a celebration! Let's trash the planet.'”
Certainly using paper products is
easier than bringing dishes with you to a picnic and then taking them
home to wash, but it's something I've started doing with my family.
We weren't able to eliminate all the paper waste last Wednesday, but
I'm glad I was part of the trash sorting that took place. And today I
did exactly the same thing, on a smaller scale, at my daughter's
Little League potluck. Melon rinds and hot dog buns in the trash? No
problem, I'm going in to get them and popping them in this bag to
take home to my compost pile.
Next fall, at the first day of school
picnic, my class will be the ones to make sure that before lunch
starts, there are bins put out for compost and recycling, so that
when kids start their clean up, they'll have the same sorting set up
as on every other day of the school year. I hope we can make it our class mission to make sure this happens regardless of where our school community is or what we're doing.
*I am only one player in my students'
continuing exposure to new foods. The food program at our school this
year was spectacular in its first year – I can only imagine what
great things Emily, Doreen and Joyce will do in coming years. They
certainly keep me on my toes; last Monday imagine my surprise when
the student responsible for bringing snack to the room showed up with
a bowl of apple slices and a bag with two coconuts in it.
“Emily said we should make friends
with them,” he told me.
“???” I responded.
Then I picked up the phone and called
down to the kitchen.
“A little clarification on the
coconuts, please?”
Emily laughed and told me she'd ordered
some for one of the other teachers (I assume for some sort of a
project) and had received more than they needed. So every classroom
got a coconut or two to do what they wished with. My students were
all over me to crack it then and there, but having never done so
before, I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing first.
Coconuts and slideshow production trump
report cards, so after school found me watching this six minute videoon how to open a coconut. First you drain the coconut water. I went
home and asked my husband which screwdriver and hammer I could take
off his workbench and bring to school to chip a hole in the coconut.
When he realized I was talking about pounding a hammer on the top of
one of his screwdrivers, his eyes got wide and he offered me the
power drill instead. When my students saw the power drill, they were
more excited than ever to open that coconut!
It was definitely the tool for the job.
We drained off the water and several kids tried a bit to see what it
tastes like. Then we popped the hollow coconut in a large ziploc,
went out on the fire escape outside my room, and took turns chucking
it at the ground until it broke into little pieces and came apart
from the shell. Most of us (me included) had never had fresh coconut
and enjoyed trying it almost as much as we enjoyed breaking it open.
Emily has been instrumental in work
writing a farm to school grant to bring more food, equipment and
training into schools in our district and just found out we will have
part of the $20,000 awarded to our district to work with next year. Who knows what will
be coming next?
*Cooking is fun. Two pieces of evidence to support this statement.
1) Graduation is the night before the last day of school. My sixth graders graduated and I was at school all evening to help make this happen. The next day was a half day, with only my fifth graders there for the morning. What would we do all morning? Room cleaning, snack, and recess only take so long. I had the genius idea earlier in the week to have them help make my potluck dish (thank you once again, Catherine Newman) for our staff lunch that afternoon, thereby saving me from having to make it the night before after an evening at graduation.
Kids came in at 8:00 and didn't even blink when I handed them sweet potatoes to peel and limes to zest and juice. As the smells started drifting down the hallway, adults started popping in.
“What are you cooking today?” they all asked.
“My dish for the potluck, of course.”
At snack time I offered all my helpers a taste of our dish and several had some. But for many kids, the cooking was enough fun, without the reward of the eating. Also, many kids enjoyed individual ingredients (roasted sweet potatoes, squeeze lime halves, crumbles of homemade feta cheese) but didn't want the finished dish. Note to self: next year provide more opportunities for eating single ingredients by way of introduction, and remember that lots of kids don't like their foods mixed together.
2) This was the best moment of the last day of school. Wonderful Colleen, who has been so helpful with every cooking project and so much more, will not be in my class next year. The student she works with has graduated and she's decided to spend time at home with her granddaughter next year. She asked me what I was planning for cooking/curriculum themes next year and when I told her, she asked what time we'd be cooking. I thought she was joking, but later in the day she clarified: she wants to come into my class as a volunteer each week because she enjoyed herself so much and doesn't want to miss out next year.
My cup runneth over.
 |
| Colleen and Su making biscuits to share at Open House |
So the year is over. How fortunate I am to have the
autonomy to make the curricular decisions I made this year; not every
school allows their teachers these freedoms. I had no idea what was
going to happen when I made that first batch of kale chips with my
class this fall. I had no idea I would connect cooking to so many
units and develop a support network of adults who would be ready to
pitch in as needed. I had no idea that I would be the first person to
introduce a student to something as simple as soy sauce or as
eclectic as nori. I had no idea I'd start a blog.
Now I have incoming sixth graders who
are already plotting homemade bread and cheese fundraisers to pay for
the 2013 end of year field trip. I have the promise of two steady
volunteers. Our school has a farm to school grant whose
implementation will involve my class.
Food and food issues are a growing part
of the national dialogue and my students are part of the action. How
cool is that?
