Children spend much of their time in schools, so educators must focus on students’ health, including all the aspects of wellness. “The promotion of students’ wellbeing could reduce the prevalence of measurable unhealthy outcomes and improve their academic achievements” (Pulimeno, 2020). It is important to remember that health is more than the absence of illness. Instead, it is “the capacity of each and all of us to feel, think, act in ways that enhance our ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges we face” (Manitoba Education, 2021, p. 3). This project, attempts to address many of the aspects of health in a cross-curricular way that builds community and strengthens connections.
Picky...picky...Time to Plan
This project will encourage students to be mindful when eating and trying and eating a wide variety of foods, as recommended in the Canadian Food Guide (2021). The “Try It Tuesdays' project responds to the overwhelming responses that I got during opening-day conferences. I explained to families that we do a lot of outdoor, land-based education in my classroom and a lot of gardening and cooking. However, many caregivers expressed that their children were “picky eaters,” so not expect them to try any foods. As a parent, I, too, have been frustrated at times at my children’s limited palates.
This prompted me to look to the Pan-Canadian Healthy School Planner (2021), the Foundational Planner and the Healthy Eating Planner (our school planners are listed below). The initial overview survey showed strong involvement from many adults, including teachers, educational assistants, administrators and parent involvement. However, an area we were lacking was student involvement. I wanted to ensure that this project included a strong student voice and choice to take ownership and be actively involved in this project.
Within the Healthy Food Module, we have significant work to engage students in promoting healthy eating actively. The JCSH Healthy Food Module recommends that “schools have had great success with student-led activities that demonstrate healthy eating. Provide students with multiple opportunities to help promote healthy eating activities at school. When students are engaged in the planning and promoting healthy eating activities, your school can better understand the factors acting as facilitators or barriers to the success of activities. As a result, students are more likely to participate in the activities (e.g., students who plant and harvest their fruits and vegetables in a school garden are more likely to eat them) (2021, p. 8).
Healthy Bodies start in the Brain
Within the project, I wanted to ensure that we prepared and ate together as recommended by the Canadian Food Guide (2021). In my own family and my classroom, I have also found that people are more willing to try foods outside of their comfort zones when they are together and have prepared it together. I wanted us to be mindful of our preparation and tasting, which improves thoughts about food, decreases shame, improves physiological well-being, and chooses foods thoughtfully instead of mindless eating (Cheung, 2020). With "nearly one million Canadians live with a diagnosable eating disorder and millions more struggle with food and weight preoccupation" (Government of Manitoba, 2021) it is important It was also important to remain food neutral when we would talk about foods. By moving away from the ideas of “good” and “bad” foods or healthy or unhealthy can cause disordered eating or disordered body image (Family Services North Shore, n.d.). In Manitoba, eating disorders cause more deaths than most other illnesses, including opioid addiction and the current wait time for disordered eating, is almost three times the national average (Women's Health Clinic, 2019), it is important that we address this topic early on in order to help stop this struggle for so many people.
More than Cooking
Similar to David Coyne (2020), I want students to take part in the “gardening and various cooking activities over the year” so that it becomes part of the classroom culture (O’Brien, p. 110). Throughout these activities will connect with multiple curricular subject areas, sustainability and make connections with various cultures. This inquiry project will be a part of our math, science, social studies, ELA, and health program. As this will be a full-year project, we began at the end of September by harvesting our garden. The students enthusiastically pulled the veggies and dug up the plants. We made sure to protect the perennials by putting leaves around the plants and discussed the importance of caring for the plants as they rest for the winter. Over the summer, we allowed some of the lettuce to bolt in our garden, allowing it to flower and then go to seed. We collected the seeds to use over the winter in our tower and the garden next spring.
Oh my veggies!
Thanks to the students over the spring months and the families in the summer months, we had a great harvest this year. The garden has been able to be successful as we ask for families to sign up using a Google drive document that folks have access to that include ways to care for the garden. Families are willing to help out as we offer them any produce that is ready when it is their week for caring for the garden. We also share our appreciation for their generosity of time and labour by making them a meal or a preserve (this year they are getting ketchup). We were able to harvest: tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, zucchini, beans, onions, beets, basil, cucumbers, mint, chives, oregano, and carrots.
We began by practicing some mindful eating by sampling some of our mint tea and basil tea. We also had some carrots, apple slices and raisins. We slowly smelled them and then tasted them and shared our findings. Following the MindUp curriculum, we described it in small groups and as a whole group (The Hawn Foundation, 2011, pp. 76-83). We talked about the importance of being mindful when we were eating, and many of the students will continue to carefully share information about their snacks and lunches with their peers at their table. This builds vocabulary and creates connections between them as they search for foods in their lunch kits that are also soft, crunchy, or spicy.
(MindUP, 2017)
Students have now brainstormed different foods that they could make with the produce that they have harvested as well as some of their favourite snacks. In order to connect home with school, we will be including many recipes from students' homes in order to build that connection with the community. Some recipes we have made and will be making over the next couple of months are chips, pasta sauce, fries with homemade ketchup, zucchini loaf, beet chips, beet borscht, and a wide range of salads. This has allowed students to be very excited about the process. Although it is called “Try-it Tuesday,” we will be cooking, baking, or trying a new food every other Tuesday in order to be sustainable as cooking every week, along with so many other great learning to happen, would become overwhelming. This will make it more manageable. To ensure that this is sustainable, I have received a small grant from the Manitoba Association of Multiage Educators to allow for small individual cooking supplies such as mini-pans, more measuring utensils, and materials for aprons. This will enable us to do this process in a COVID-safe way.
The first item we have made is potato chips. Students used a mandolin to thinly slice the newly harvested potatoes, and we lightly salted them and used a microwave chipper to create tasty, crunchy chips. They were a huge hit although time-consuming as we used the microwave chipper instead of adding oil in a pan.
We have also been able to make pasta with noodles. This was a huge hit, and the sauce included swiss chard, basil, oregano, onions, and tomatoes, all from our school garden. I also foraged for wild plums before the school year with my sisters. I brought the plums in and used the school rhubarb to make jam for our bannock.
A surprising win was sauteed swiss chard. It is a simple recipe with swiss chard, butter, and salt and pepper (Sacher, 2021).
The recipe is available on my Food Project Page and the link includes the YouTube links as well as QRs to the videos with written text.
Troubleshooting and Addressing Barriers
We also have some barriers that we needed to overcome - mainly onions. The students have expressed that they do not like cutting the onions and do not like seeing them. We used the strategy that we use at my home, we shred them all up in advance, but wearing goggles, and then freeze them in 1/2 cup bags which is equivalent to a medium-sized
onion.
We have also have connected with some of the families to gather some recipes so that they are familiar recipes and ones that celebrate their own cultures and homes.
I have also reached out to each family at the start of the year to address any food restrictions or sensitivities in order to ensure that all will be safe as we try new foods.
Building Connections to Community
To build community, we have made bannock to gift to Kookum Hilda as she is our Ojibwe language teacher. In my school division, kindergarten, grade one, and grade two all have the opportunity to have early exposure to Ojibwe. As an act of gratitude, we made butter from cream, jam from wild plums and rhubarb, and made bannock for sharing as a class as we began to learn the language.
Next Steps
We have lots of other recipes planned for the upcoming weeks and months. We have shredded the carrots to preserve them and will be making carrot muffins. Our class also found a way to make pesto and have frozen it to use later this winter when we will learn how to make fresh noodles. In order to be nut safe, as often pine nuts are in the same facility as regular nuts, we used sunflower seeds in our recipe. Some other recipes that we will be doing over the next couple of months are ketchup (for the fries and ketchup they are so excited about, zucchini muffins, and beet borscht. Many of the recipes are shared recipes and ones that have been used in the past and ones that are used with the Food Bank in our community (Sacher, 2020). Many of the other recipes are from the Learning Together from Home Nutrition (Child Nutrition Council of Manitoba, 2020) document and the Kids in the Kitchen program (WRHA, n.d.) We will also be planting our tower garden in the next couple of weeks, as the plants have just begun to sprout. This will provide us with various vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and spinach.
Beet Borscht recipe (Sacher, 2021) I will be using some of the recipes, as they are simple and easy to make, that are on my YouTube page (Sacher, 2020)
We will be sewing our own aprons and learning how to ensure safety and appropriate hygiene for the kitchen. Our class will also be using the Farm to Fork unit plan (Sacher et al., 2020) that was created by myself and a group of other MEd - SCI students for an earlier class project. As we move forward this edible education means that “math becomes a practical, hands-on class...language class is enhanced by the translation of recipes or stories from other cultures...All classes are embedded in real, evolving, living environments” (O’Brien & Howard, 2020, p. 122). I am excited to see where this journey, which we have just begun, will lead as students have a chance to express what they want to try and grow next.
References
Canada Health. (2021, October 19). Government of Canada. Canada's Food Guide. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/.
Cheung, L. (2020, September 18). Mindful eating. The Nutrition Source. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/mindful-eating/.
Child Nutrition Council of Manitoba. (2020). Learning together at home. Manitoba Home Nutrition and Learning Program. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://mbnutritionlearning.ca/learning-together-at-home/.
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MindUP™ (2017, January 18). MindUP™ lesson 7 - mindful tasting. YouTube. Retrieved October 25, 2021, from https://youtu.be/MdxSaFYf5iQ.
O'Brien, T., & Howard, P. (Eds.). (2020). Featherston Drive Public School: Teaching Interconnectedness in an Ecosystem of Relationships. Living Schools: Transforming Education, 105–117.
O'Brien, T., & Howard, P. (Eds.). (2020). Edible Education. Living Schools: Transforming Education, 119-126.
Pulimeno, M., Piscitelli, P., Colazzo, S., Colao, A., & Miani, A. (2020, November 7). School as ideal setting to promote health and wellbeing among young people. Health promotion perspectives. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7723000/.
Sacher, C. (2020, March 22). Charlene Sacher. YouTube. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbp_UhZ6pzUsVQMqGzVI4Pw.
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Sacher, C., Pochynok, L., Muñoz , A., & Als, C. (2020, October). Farm to Fork: Where does our food come from? An Integrated Primary Teaching Guide. Sustainability in Action. Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://d4e75df4-d743-418c-bb97-699b1ba1da86.filesusr.com/ugd/8de83e_9f5971eea430431488d134804cf9488d.pdf.
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The Hawn Foundation. (2011). The MindUP Curriculum Grades Pre-K - 2: Brain-Focused Strategies for Learning and Living (pg. 76-83). New York, NY: Scholastic.
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. (n.d.) Kids in the Kitchen: How to set up a kid's cooking club. Winnipeg, MB: WRHA.
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