Embedded education, what does that look like?
In Port Townsend High School it looks like Jen Kruse's freshman health class where the students work in the school’s veggie garden and taste test the produce, or stepping it up a notch in her Culinary Arts class. Prior to the COVID shutdown, that meant about 75 hours of hands-on education. During COVID, the hours were cut back to about 40 when classes resumed along with the spring planting season. The lessons were still learned -- fresh tastes better and garden work is fun.
Freshman students are required to take health education, but because of their positive experience many return to participate in the garden as juniors and seniors, take Jen's CTE Culinary Arts class, or join the Sustainability Club mentioned in last month's post.
Jen encourages students to learn about their own eating habits by keeping food diaries and understanding what plants contain what kind of vitamins and minerals. She uses an assortment of online apps such as Cronometer.com to quickly show the "content label" per se, on a whole food. Students are challenged to create a menu with a well-balanced meal and to know what makes a healthy snack.
In the Culinary Arts, students learn about knife handling (always a good idea…) and how to create comfort food for less. "They love the breakfast options, but also enjoy freshly made soups, and how imaginative plating or adding color and edible flowers into a salad turns boring into delicious. Of course, they also can't get enough of garden fresh potatoes turned into French fries," says Jen.
Students enjoy the positive feedback they receive when something they help grow ends up on the cafeteria plates under PT Schools Food Director, Stacey Larsen's monthly plan. They also learn what it means to be part of a community when some of that grown produce goes to the Port Townsend Food Bank and the Food Bank gives feedback that their Romaine lettuce disappears quickly, or the Culinary Arts class creates a finished meal to give to a shelter.
Bottom line, everything has to taste amazing or why do it? From taste testing store bought strawberries against garden grown or making their own pesto and tomato sauce from scratch, the freshmen and Culinary Arts students learn how growing/eating fresh makes a meal memorable.
For the 80-100 kids working in the garden to the 20-40 taking her Culinary Arts class, hopefully the lessons learned will become embedded in their lives.