Social Studies and Web 2.0- Curious about how to use Web 2.0 tools in a meaningful way in your social studies classes? You’ll leave this workshop—conducted by fellow teachers—able to start using Web 2.0 tools with your students. March 27, 2009 LAPDA Meeting Space Montpelier, VT
The Food Institute Project
Many moons ago, while asking ourselves the question Dr. Many posed last month, “what to teach?”, a group of us decided that answer was “sustainability”. “Sustainability” is a state of existence where the social, economic and ecological needs of the present generation are provided for in a manner that doesn’t compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This is a difficult concept to teach, especially since we as a society are not even close.
That said, the 3 basic facets of need; Social, Economic, and Ecological, make sustainability an ideal concept for collaboration within departments and across the curriculum. Studies show, as presented in our last in-service, that collaboration between teachers leads to the most effective education.
Sustainability in progress is hard to assess. It’s really a wandering path and you could be closer or further from the needed course. Hindsight is 20/20, and whether we ever get there is hard to say, but you can be certain that any time you reduce our consumption of resources, you’re moving in the right direction. This thinking led to the composting program, construction of the greenhouse and the development of the agricultural grounds. By growing our own food, we are sidestepping a food system that on average sends our food about 1,500 miles between the farm and our plate. There is a whole lot of pollution that comes with those miles.
Students are learning about sustainability by helping make our school more sustainable. This is service learning. It works, and if you haven’t tried it, you’re about to get an opportunity.
The Biology and Environmental classes have had a lot of success teaching with food. The Health classes recently had a lot of success teaching with food.
Food is relevant. Incorporating food into a lesson or unit makes it come alive. You can be reading about it, writing about it, making a historical connection. It’s what we are, it’s how we got here, and will ultimately determine what we become.
We are only scratching the surface of this project’s potential. It will be more and more effective, and more and more powerful as additional classes join in.
So here comes the invitation to participate. I call it:
The “Win, Win, Win”
The Food Institute = a professional development course, held at MHS, administered by Food Works
Take the class for either recertification credit or graduate credit.
You’ll need these credits at some point, if you’re not up now, think ahead.
The class will be right here at MHS and is paid for by the district. = WIN
The product will be a unit that ties your curriculum to the larger sustainability effort at MHS by making some connection to food. The culmination of the unit will be a service learning project that puts your students in the kitchen to help prepare a meal for the school, with food grown right here at MHS.
Interesting, relevant, engaging Service Learning unit = WIN
The biggest hurdle to serving healthy, tasty, local, whole foods is the cost of labor. It takes one person to open a #10 can, or a box of potato flakes, or a bag of French fries. It takes many people, or more time, to slice, dice, peel and chop. If it was one class working in the kitchen each week, I would agree with parents concerned about the educational value. But if it was 5 different classes, each involved preparing one meal that was tied to the lessons they just learned….
More healthy, tasty meals served in the cafeteria = WIN
The specifics of the class are still being worked out. We need to get a sense of interest to move further. We know it’ll be here. We know it’ll be paid for. How frequently we meet, for how long, and how often is yet to be determined. We know we want to start by the end of March so that you can figure out what foods you will need so the Environmental class can plant your crops in May.
Joseph Kiefer and Food Works are wonderful to work with. Having Matt McLane providing Service Learning support nearly guarantees your success. If you have questions about the product, talk to Carolyn Kiniry. If you have questions about the class or want to sign up, see me, or Matt.
