food education
How is Common Roots helping to provide food eduction?
Through community donations, Common Roots supports two food educators who each work 25 hours a week in our K-12 schools. Additionally, Common Roots has two University of Vermont interns who work on the food education team. Collectively, they provide classroom lessons on the vegetable of the month, conduct taste-testings in the lunchroom, facilitate field trips to our farm partners, and have been available for curricular connections grades 6-12.
Updates from the Food Education program:
It's hard to believe how quickly the month of April flew by! It seems as if spring only just started, but now we are well into the season. As mentioned in my previous post, the Harvest of the Month that was taught in the classrooms at Orchard and Chamberlin schools was dry beans.
Just like March's "Ridiculous Roots," dry beans are winter storage foods. Vermont beans that were grown last summer were harvested and dried for farmers and consumers alike to enjoy throughout the long, barren winter. This way, we support local agriculture during all months of the year.
Farm-to-school lessons included a couple of exciting scientific activities and realizations. The students learned that beans are actually seeds -- the pods that they grow in are considered the fruit.
Over the past several months, students have learned to classify the five main parts of the plant and which vegetables, grains, and legumes fall under each category: roots, stem, leaf, seed, and fruit. It made sense to them why the bean was the seed and the pod was the fruit, because we identify the fruit as the reproductive part of the plant --the one with seeds inside!
The students were given two soaked kidney beans to dissect during the lesson as we identified all five parts of the bean seed. We established that the purpose of all seeds is to become plants; thus, we identified the function of each of the five parts in becoming part of the new plant. For instance, the radicle, which can be found after peeling off the seed coat, is in fact the baby root.
Next, we sprouted yellow-eyed and black Vermont beans using a damp paper towel and a small Ziploc bag. After a few days passed, students were encouraged to open their bags and taste the sprouts. Bean sprouts contain great amounts of protein, Vitamin C and Vitamin K.
This month included a taste test featuring Mexican Lasagna, as well. Overall, the reception of the dish was one of the most positive, and over 350 students participated between both schools. The results can be found below. The most exciting part about all of this is that Mexican Lasagna will be featured on the school lunch menu on May 17!
Stay tuned for a school gardens update -- the ball is rolling at Chamberlin and we hope to see a couple of raised beds in the schoolyard by the end of the month!
Mexican Lasagna Taste Test Results:
61% of students at both schools said "Yes, I love it!"
18% said "Maybe, I'd try it again."
20% said "No, thank you."
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Food For Thought
"Consider how Americans might respond to a proposal that agriculture was to become a
mandatory subject in all schools, alongside reading and mathematics. A fair number of
parents would get hot under the collar to see their kid's attention being pulled away from
the essentials of grammar, the all-important trigonometry, to make room for down on the
farm stuff. The baby-boom psyche embraces a powerful presumption that education is a
key to moving away from manual labor and dirt – two undeniable ingredients of farming.
It's good enough for us that somebody, somewhere, knows food production well enough
to serve the rest of us with all we need to eat, each day of our lives.
If that is true, why isn't it good enough for someone else to know multiplication and the
contents of the Bill of Rights? Is the story of bread, from tilled ground to our table, less
relevant to our lives than the history of 13 colonies? Couldn't one make a case for the
relevance of a subject that informs choices we make daily – as in, 'What's for dinner?'
Isn't ignorance of our food sources causing problems as diverse as over-dependence on
petroleum, and an epidemic of diet-related diseases?"