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Tuesday evenings quickly became the highlight of my week, and I wasn’t the only one. Folks were invited to come to as many Tuesdays fit their schedule, and our cooking classes developed into a small group of regulars, who readily became comfortable with each other. In Guilford County, FoodCorps service members have facilitated family cooking classes for the past few years, and at their best, these classes are a way to celebrate the joy and community that comes through preparing and eating food together as a group.

This spring, we intentionally set up the structure of the classes to be participant-led. There were no intake forms, no required attendance, no cooking instructors or formal nutrition educators. Instead, there was a standing invitation and an open sign-up sheet. There were discussions about future recipes throughout every class. There were cooking stations set up each week for everyone to cook communally, and a wealth of knowledge, skills, and curiosity that participants shared with each other.

Two women with culinary degrees fielded questions about knife skills and making salad dressings from scratch. Another, who had owned a grill and nightclub, kept our recipes on schedule for a timely dinner. A nutrition student clarified the difference between table salt and sodium when the topic came up over dinner. Two teenagers claimed the right to be ongoing dessert chefs, making whipped cream one week with a giant whisk, arranging orange slices into a beautiful presentation the next, and firing up the blender for smoothies our final week.

The informal nature of the class helped create a communal atmosphere. It opened space for conversation as we cooked and ate together. It elicited creativity when we didn’t have all the spices the recipes called for, with participants brainstorming and adapting on the fly. And it allowed for group problem-solving instead of disaster when we blew out the circuits in the fellowship hall (and were making burgers and fries with electric induction burners and Actifry air fryers).

When asked what they like best about the cooking classes, one participant reflected,

“Community building and open discussion where everyone feels comfortable sharing and talking. Food brings people together and lets them see new options in action and taste it with everyone else. Trying new things is easier when you’re not alone. I like the feeling of a safe space.”

Me too.

The post Cooking and Eating in Community appeared first on FoodCorps.

At Lawrence High School, the LHS Prep students are building a garden – literally reshaping the land. To give you perspective – the garden is 5,000 square feet in size (50’ x 100’). It’s big enough to be a successful vendor at a farmers market with a serious bounty. Students in the LHS Prep unit are typically 16-22 years of age, and are identified with special needs for education. And, truth be told – I’m impressed by these budding green thumbs (students and teachers alike). We’ve yet to harvest a crop together – but they’ve proven to be hard workers and they can learn anything.

Over the past 8 months, students in the Lawrence High School PREP unit have moved over 20 cubic yards of woodchips (about 12,000 pounds – think 3 four door sedans) and spread 4 cubic yards of compost (8,000 pounds – think 2 four-door sedans).

When they moved 4 cubic yards of compost, they did so by hand and bucket. Students finished the task in 1 session of 70 minutes, with 15 sets of hands at work (that’s 114 pounds moved per minute). They have learned how to swing a mallet, measure, tie off a tight line to mark out a garden, use a shovel, wheel a barrow, and why on Earth we can use cardboard to smother out grass. We are using math to figure out how many seeds to plant, keeping records, and as always learning how to put respect and care into every action. Its about learning, and doing work.

At first – students did not question why they were moving over 12,000 lbs of woodchips by hand, or why they were laying cardboard on the ground and then covering it with woodchips. Students knew they were building walking paths – but never asked why we did it this way. I had to ask myself – “Why do they do what I ask them without knowing why? Furthermore, why do they ask to come outside with me without knowing why?” Personally, I’ve got to know why if I’m going to be willing to do something.

I realized this was a useless approach to understanding my students so I asked them why they like being out in the garden, doing physical labor like shoveling and running a wheelbarrow. They say “I like being outside,” or “This is real, I like real, I don’t like schoolwork.” I can relate. I’m not an office kind of adult – I like real gardens, real sun, and real other stuff (like food).

I’ve gotten to be in this amazing opportunity because I am FoodCorps service member at Groundwork Lawrence (GWL), here in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Through FoodCorps and GWL I help public school youth grow up healthy through gardening, nutrition, and cooking education. I’m happy to give students an opportunity to focus on a real task –  this is what they want, and it’s fortunate that I can enable them guide their own education. While, at the same time, connecting them to real food through gardening.

Garden education works – and it comes in many forms. Today students ask questions, as well as get work done.

For example: “What is that thing that makes so much noise?” (The rototiller). “What does it do?” (Loosens the soil). “Why are we tilling?” (Why do you think we are loosening the soil?) The questions show that they are engaged with their learning while in the garden! To top it off, the whole school recognizes their work, and the students alongside the teachers are proud of the work they are doing.  Spring crops are in the ground, and summer crops are to go in the next month – and the school is starting to take the wheel from me on this wild 5000 sq foot adventure we have started together (and I love it).

The post Lawrence High School is Building a Garden, a Big Garden appeared first on FoodCorps.

One of my very first lessons was with a fourth grade class during their Native American Studies week. The teachers asked me to do a lesson about Native American foods…something I knew nothing about. I ended up doing almost everything wrong in this lesson, but I most certainly learned from it. With the help of a friend, I collected some chokecherries and, as a class, we talked about pemmican and then practiced mashing up the chokecherries with a mortar and pestle. Unfortunately, other than the fact that mashing anything can be fun, and that chokecherries are sour, I don’t think the students really learned anything. I felt like I perpetuated stereotypes about Native American people such as the perception that all Native American tribes had similar traditions and ate similar things and that they had simplistic traditions and practices. The reality is that there are dozens of different tribes just within Montana and each has its own traditions, foods, practices, ideas and people. Additionally, these traditions, foods, practices, and ideas change and grow over time.

This year, I finally decided to jump back into Native American lessons, but I decided to do it right this time. I dug into Montana’s Office of Public Instruction website and searched through the Indian Education for All materials. In Montana, Indian Education for All (IEFA) is included as a necessary part of the curriculum so all students learn about different aspects of Native American history, culture, and art throughout their public education. As I was searching through the materials, I searched for a lesson that was relevant to gardening and that I could do during a limited time period. Luckily, that particular week I had a double lesson with one of my second-grade classes and I found the perfect lesson, “There is a Season”.  Not only was this lesson age- and material-appropriate, it was also geographically accurate. Kalispell, where my students and I live and learn, is a Salish word meaning “flat land above the lake.”

“There is a Season” is an IEFA lesson that examines the seasons with a focus on the  Salish seasonal round. It compares what students today do during different seasons with what the Salish did during different seasons and also compares the European calendar to the Salish Seasonal Round as well as to the Salish names for different months.

What did I learn from this lesson? I learned how much knowledge my students already have about each season and what activities they do during different seasons. I learned that there are parallels today between what we do during certain seasons and what the Salish did (and in some cases continue to do) during certain seasons including fishing in the spring and summer, harvesting in the fall and enjoying flowers in the spring and summer. I also learned that many of my students have Native American heritage and that is something they take pride in. It was fun for us to learn from each other about which tribes our family members belong to.

What did my students learn from this lesson? To answer this question, I can only speculate. But from the Salish Seasonal Rounds that they created, I can tell you this: Many of them remembered that the Salish tell “Coyote Stories” in the winter. They also remembered the story of the Bitterroot and that the Bitterroot ceremony and harvest take place in the spring. I know that my students were enchanted by the story of the buffalo hunt and a bit disturbed by the frequent mention of death in the story of the bitterroot which describes a time when the Salish were starving to death but were saved by the bitterroot. I also learned that some of them are a bit confused about the order of the seasons, as some of the rounds go summer, winter, fall spring. We’ll keep working on the order of the seasons….

In the end, I’m glad that I took the time to adequately research and prepare an IEFA lesson so that both my students and I could benefit from Salish knowledge and teachings. I still feel the pull to integrate local native knowledge, culture, and food into my teachings. Throughout the rest of my time here in Kalispell, I will continue to incorporate Indian Education for All lessons into my curriculum for the benefit of my students, myself and our connection to this place we call home.

The post There is a Season appeared first on FoodCorps.

FoodCorps service members recently reunited at Regional Mid-Year Gatherings. At ours, I got to see service members from Arizona, California, New Mexico, Hawaii and my own service state of Montana. Between sessions, we  reconnected with these fellow service members over meals, hikes, and hangouts. Again, I was struck by the different lives we came from and the differing dreams we have for our futures.

During sessions and in our free time, we shared strategies for connecting with a busy food service director. We gave recipes that gently introduce kids to beets.  We tried to one-up each other with stories of the funniest thing a kid has said or done in the garden. We looked out for each other. We shared stories — some failures, some successes.

Despite our differences, it’s incredible that we’re all bonded by our belief that kids should be connected to real food. We insist that kids should know where their food comes from and we dare to hope they’ll learn to love it as much as we do.

The post Creating Community Among FoodCorps Service Members appeared first on FoodCorps.

I learned quickly that getting kids to eat healthy isn’t just about giving them access to healthy food. A lot of the time, you have to truly engage the kids with the food in order for them to become interested.

Here are some tricks and tools I’ve learned that turn the most skeptical students into eager eaters.

1. Having him or her be the chef. Research shows that when kids are involved in the process of making a recipe, they are much more likely to try it, and like it! Getting kids involved in the cooking or assembling process, no matter how easy or difficult it is, has shown to be very effective. I break up jobs into kid-friendly tasks and try to let them work as autonomously as possible so that they truly feel like they own the dish. Not only does this make the kids want to eat it, but it also builds self-confidence.

2. Using a little peer pressure. Let’s face it: kids, for the most part, like to fit in. If they see that all of their peers are trying kale chips, you better believe they’ll try a kale chip. Sometimes all it takes is some gentle reminding, from an instructor, parent, or peer, that everyone else is enjoying the snack. In the past, I’ve put my students’ peers up to the task of describing how wonderful they thought the food was to their not-so-enthusiastic peer, in hopes that this would push them towards the healthy snack. This often works, but other times, all it takes is for the hesitant student to see all of his or her peers munching to realize, “well, I guess just one bite won’t hurt…”

3. Letting the kids decide for themselves. After prodding one particular student incessantly to try our new snack with the rest of the class, he pulled me aside and said, “but Miss Rachel, what if I’m too shy to meet new foods?” This helped me learn that sometimes, kids just need a little extra time to prepare themselves for trying  something new. In my experience, it’s been much more effective to let a hesitant eater take his or her time and decide for themselves than it is to try to convince him or her to try the new food. If and when the students does decide to try the new food, it will have been on his or her own accord: nobody made them do it. An independently-made decision like this is much more likely to lead the student to try more new, healthy foods in the future than if anyone had forced them to try it.

4. Linking the new food to other foods in the students’ world. So, why didn’t any of my students like the collard pesto last year, but this year, it was a hit?! Last year, I didn’t walk the students through making the connection between the oily green dip on their plates and what their grandmothers grew in the collard patch on the side of the house. I didn’t lead students to explore the similarities and differences between our collard greens recipe and their families’ collard recipes. On the other hand, this year I made it a point to help my students connect our snacks to other foods in their homes, communities, and the cafeteria. This made them more likely to try things, because kids are much more likely to try new foods if they are similar to something they’ve seen before. I’ve learned that taking time to learn the culture and home of your students is crucial so that the foods you make together make sense to them in the broader landscape of their lives.

The post From Skeptical to “Can I Have Seconds?:” Four Ways to Get Kids to Eat New Foods appeared first on FoodCorps.

A huge grin broke out on Mateo’s face when he tried a Fugi apple in a taste test. After his remark, the third grader was up on his feet in a flash and busted out his best dance moves. When his 5 second dance party was over, he calmly sat down and ate the rest of his apple slices while smiling from ear to ear.

The post #TryThings and Dance appeared first on FoodCorps.