NorCal Wanders: Edible Schoolyard Tour

One of my proudest moments this fall was taking time to stay home and rest.  For once, I slowed down enough to heal the aches and pains of a distended schedule full of summer's adventures.  PRO: I cooked a lot more.  Many thanks to the internets for inspiring me to appreciate metal and vegan thai cooking.  Inspiration comes in many forms these days.

Viewer Discretion Advised: Strong Language  

(I warned you, Mom!)

September 5th, 2013

Berkeley, California

9:00-11:00am

Edible Schoolyard Tour at 

Martin Luther King Middle School

I've been daydreaming about sustainability's role in education the last few years.  A focused piece of the Very Complex sustainability puzzle I gravitate toward is mindful food sourcing and healthy preparation for kids.  When I moved back to Ohio in 2012, I was very seriously gearing up to volunteer time and muscle for training in farming sustainability, expecting to mash it eventually with my education background.  I fully anticipated to be up to my elbows in organic muck most of 2013 and 2014 learning gardening and farming practices.  I drooled over programs like the Food Corps.  

I think advocating Food Justice and exposing kids to proper nutrition is possibly one of the most important ways I could think to spend my days.  Some of the best market strategists around, kids bend their parents into buying them pizza and chicken nuggets.  Imagine how American wellness would change if kids were picky enough to demand veggies with their dinner!

REALITY CHECK: it's hard to put big ideas and dreams into actions.  And I bypassed my gardening goals to come back to California and work for Sienna Ranch.  I'd be a fool to be anything less than grateful for the serendipitous fortunes that have come out of moving to Oakland and working in Lafayette.  It's just taken me a different route toward food justice than I imagined.

Jason gave me Alice Water's Edible Schoolyard as an understated birthday gift.  I had a hard time sleeping one night and went out to the living room and read it cover to cover.  I was hooked.  Five months later, Jason encouraged me to learn more about the Edible Schoolyard Project, running strong at Martin Luther King Middle School.  He saw that they give free monthly tours of the garden, cooking classroom and district food preparation headquarters.  He took a day off work, signed us both up and went with me for the tour.

Tour Stop #1: The Garden

We saw kids participating in their garden orientation: a scavenger hung that took them through the kiwi trellis, over to the compost pile and past the tool shed, organized with Montessori-inspired design elements to set students up for success as they access and return the shovels and rakes they use for their garden chores.  

The tour introduced the integrated curriculum approach and inquiry-based lessons students participate in to discover how tomatoes grow into the salsa on their chips.  This acre, formerly the teacher's parking lot, now is one of the most beloved spots on the campus.

Tour Stop #2: The Cafeteria

While the garden achieves the goal of exposure of students to Real Food, the mastery involved in bringing good food to students on a large scale is thanks to the day to day work of the Berkeley Food Service Department.  We got the honor of hearing about the back-breaking work that goes into preparing home cooked lunches for all kids in the Berkeley School District, and the logistics involved are staggering.

Offering universal breakfast qualifies the schools for a subsidy so they can use their cash budget to purchase as many local and organic foods as possible for hot lunches.  As a result, all kids are guaranteed breakfast and everyone has access to nutritious, balanced, affordable lunches.  It's a true novelty to public education.  Oh, and the subsidies?  The government subsidies come in the form of frozen meat, ordered two years in advance.  The Food Service Director plans her entire district's menu a year in advance.  She orders the rest of the food two weeks in advance, has her staff cooked lunches a week ahead of time so they can be flash-cooled and packaged for transport to schools where they get reheated.  It is one of the most impressive programs I've encountered.

I left this portion of the tour speechless.

 Stop #3: The Kitchen Classroom

Empowering students to learn about what it takes to share a meal family-style is an art I had no idea was lost in many of today's youth.  I grew up with home-cooked family dinner being such a routine that I overgeneralized this to be the norm.  I am wrong.

Cooking and baking food a brilliant cross-curriculuar opportunity to integrate math, humanities and science into one useful end result.  The collaboration used to learn about the economics of trade between countries for regional ingredients is just one of so many life lessons learned in the kitchen classroom.  I had never put value in home economics course work.  I skipped the chance to take Global Cusine so I could cram Honors Physics into my schedule.  What in the world was I thinking?

The Take Away

I cried!  Like a dork!  For hours!

I got on my bike and made Jason ride ahead of me to REI, where I promptly sat on the ground next to the bike rack and blubbered.  I pulled it together enough to ride home, but this tour was a slap in the face reminding me that I am passionate.  I do have dreams.  There are programs I can join to make the difference I want to see in the world.  In fact, the dream machine is 4.7 miles from where I live.  Now it's time to get un-stuck and do something about it.