“How can we improve the systems we’re a part of?”
That’s the question my team posed to our 4th- through 6th-grade students last spring at The Cornwall School, in Cornwall VT. It was the start of a deep dive into education for sustainability.
Integrating food studies into schools leads to thinking about interconnectedness in other ares of study. But don’t take my word for it: meet some amazing students from The Cornwall School, in Cornwall VT, who definitely won’t be surviving on Pop Tarts, ramen or mac and cheese when they grow up.
“My favorite root vegetable is probably the beet because you can do so many fun things with it. In a beet salad, you usually have thinly sliced beets with some Feta cheese on it, and sometimes, you’ll add some brussels sprouts or something, like maybe a hard-boiled egg or two on top. Another great thing to do with beets is to put it on a pizza, so pizza crust with a little Maple syrup on top with beets, Feta cheese on it.”
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Last year the most amazing thing happened: my students at the Cornwall School designed and built a playground. They dreamed, planned, proposed, revised, fundraised — deep breath — organized, built and managed.
But then they taught themselves how to share their story: with social media, and with a whole world of educators, so that other students might have the same experience.
As we cultivate more self-direction in students, their lives get more complicated. They have a greater responsibility to themselves and their success.
How can we nurture the whole student as they grapple with becoming agents of their own education?
Remember the last time you had to sit through meetings all day? You probably woke up in the morning dreading the amount of time you would have to sit and listen to others talk, while being expected to contribute to the conversation, only getting up for the occasional bathroom or lunch break.
While we dread these isolated incidents, we put our students through it day in and day out. So instead, let’s get up and move!