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Learning
lessons in school cafeterias
September 29, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Where does learning happen?
For Alice Waters, it happens in garden dirt and kitchen mixing
bowls.
Waters, a well-known cookbook author and chef at Chez Panisse
restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., also devotes a good deal of
her time leading a lunchroom revolution she calls the Edible
Schoolyard.
Her flagship food laboratory is located at the Martin Luther
King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, Calif. where 950 students
help plan, plant, tend and cultivate a one-acre organic garden.
The students also plan, prepare and eat meals – using
ingredients they’ve grown – in a kitchen classroom
where they gain an appreciation of the cycle of food production
and share food talk around the table with teachers and classmates.
The Edible Schoolyard program is integrated into the school’s
curriculum, including elements of arts and science, math,
social studies, and physical education.
Waters said that getting kids involved in making food “opens
pathways that bring information in.”
“Kids come into the classroom and it’s very hands-on,”
Waters said during a food journalists’ conference earlier
this month in San Francisco. “Kids like this. After
phys ed, it’s their favorite class.”
Three principles guide the program:
* Participatory. Committee members, staff, teachers and students
representing the racial, ethnic and demographic diversity
of the school and community plan and manage the garden.
* Ecological. Earth-friendly farming practices are used for
food production and waste recycling.
* Aesthetic. Value is placed on creating a beautiful space.
In today’s culture, said Waters, kids are learning that
everything – including food – is fast, cheap and
easy. But it can be meaningful for students to learn there
can be more to what goes onto the plate, she said.
That translates in many ways.
“They’re hungry for someone to care about them,”
she said. “Food is about care.”
For schools that use garden space for growing food, Waters
sees benefits beyond anything else being done today to promote
good nutrition in the schools.
“There aren’t many big ideas about how to solve
the problems,” said Waters.
Instead, she said, the teaching of fundamental values about
food in a cultural context is what is necessary to save coming
generations from diets and lifestyles that undermine health.
Waters doesn’t think much of marketing efforts to sell
kids on the benefits of school meals. “It’s absolutely
the wrong way to go,” she said.
Instead, Waters favors the integrated, hands-on approach she
espouses in her Edible Schoolyard where kids learn an awareness
of and appreciation for simple, whole foods, community and
land stewardship.
“I want it to be just what it is, a delicious, ripe
tomato,” she said.
She recommends exposing kids to “the ritual of the kitchen.”
“Teach kids to put a centerpiece on the table,”
she suggested.
Waters is also an advocate of making the national school lunch
program a part of a school curriculum that includes using
local food systems – including school gardens –
as a forum for learning, while teaching students about the
interrelatedness of community, culture, food, health and the
environment.
To learn more about the school lunch curriculum Waters uses
in conjunction with gardens and kitchen classrooms, visit
the Center for Ecoliteracy at http://www.ecoliteracy.org/.
Images from the garden depicting the program’s values
– including beauty, diversity, craftsmanship, responsibility,
tolerance, commitment, patience, simplicity, orderliness and
the pleasure of work – can be viewed online at http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/mission.html.
What Alice Waters teaches kids in middle school is likely
a lesson from which we could all benefit.
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