In the cafeteria, Leslie Johnson, the school’s former senior vice president for finance and operations, remembers students eating pizza made with peppers they harvested and sausage from a farm they visited. A fifth-grader told her about the mural of pigs, rainbow-colored vegetables, and portraits of local farmers, and mapped where all the food originated. Aromas wafted from the kitchen where students informed menu development using nutrition data they analyzed in class.
Students need proper nourishment to learn, but they aren’t often involved in meal-planning, the sourcing of ingredients, or most other aspects of the school cafeteria other than eating. But the cafeteria can be a place to watch the magic of education unfold, an opportunity to turn feeding students into teachable moments. Preparing students for a dynamic, unknown future starts with reimagining the cafeteria as an integral laboratory for project-based learning.
The Cafeteria as a Learning Laboratory
In 2012, Nardin’s cafeteria meals contained processed, precooked foods reheated by workers who didn’t have culinary training. An average of 80 students ate the school lunch daily. Students and parents wanted healthier, better-tasting food options, and that’s when Nardin partnered with Beyond Green Sustainable Food Partners.Chef Greg Christian, founder of Beyond Green Sustainable Food Partners, has spent the past decade of a 35-year culinary career supporting independent and public schools as they transition from using processed foods to fresh ingredients. His farm-to-school program, which Nardin implemented, centers on awakening the student voice. Christian asks students what they want to eat and how they feel about the current cafeteria menu. When students see their ideas incorporated, they become engaged leaders.
At Nardin, students helped to revamp the cafeteria program. With the help of new, more experienced cooks, they learned about healthy foods and how they could eliminate waste as a way to save money for high-quality ingredients from local farmers. They began separating waste in the cafeteria and diverted 90 percent of the school’s waste from landfills by 2015. With the improved food and programming in place, an average of 500 students started eating school lunch daily.
In the first year of the program, the school installed a garden and hired Nicole Capitumino, a sustainability coordinator. She started with a core group of five teachers who committed to bringing students into the garden one day each week for experiential learning opportunities. Seeing the students’ enthusiasm, other teachers joined.
Growing Together
During a biology lesson in the Nardin garden, a high school student, pointing at a nearby plant, asked Capitumino, “what is this?” It was a broccoli plant that had flowered and gone to seed. In that moment, the student exclaimed, “I’ve been learning about plant biology my whole life but have never understood it until now.”In schools that optimize teachable moments such as these, students learn where their food comes from, who and what was impacted by their food choices, and how to make decisions around food and health that contribute to global ideals. Students are able to think through questions such as “is it good for me?” and “is it good for society?” Weaving these ideas into education, beginning in kindergarten, allows for deeply engaged learning and an understanding of the complex problems our world faces, including poverty, inequality, climate change, and environmental degradation.
Capitumino, now the founder and CEO of Social Innovation Platform, says many students need their natural curiosity to be reawakened. She suggests that schools consider project-based learning opportunities for the cafeteria with these tips:
- Develop relationships and trust. Create projects based on existing curriculum with the help of a sustainability coordinator or curriculum coach. Allow them the time to listen and see how and what teachers are covering in class, so they can build real-world learning opportunities.
- Weave learning across subjects. Make connections among various disciplines and the cafeteria. For example, students create a Colonial Times menu based on what they’re learning in social studies and study plant reproduction in biology class through gardening.
- Focus on process rather than outcomes. Project-based learning can look very different at any given school. One school may involve students in planning cafeteria menus in health class, making the food in culinary class, and planting gardens in science class. Another school may focus on food policy in government classes and then write about their experiences in language arts. By holding true to the process of learning, rather than the outcomes desired, diverse, adaptable, and responsive learning experiences can address real community needs.
