We started class last week with a circle where students had a chance to share their favorite noodle. We discussed how people from China (the birthplace of the noodle) first came to the San Francisco Bay Area to work in the mines, in agriculture, and to help build the first transcontinental railroad. We watched a short film about current efforts to make visible the role Chinese workers played in building the railroad, and learned about the Chinese Exclusion Act, the nation’s first immigration law that excluded an entire ethnic group.
As our school hones its civil rights curriculum, our students are beginning to draw meaningful connections across time and space. While we examined how Chinese laborers were portrayed on posters in the late 1880s as rat-like beasts, a student asked, “Why didn’t Black people and Chinese people work together to fight back?”
In the kitchen, our young chefs chopped and snipped their way through a truly enormous pile of seasonal vegetables at each table. They then stir-fried garlic, ginger, and green onions in a wok, added the other vegetables, the noodles, and finally a soy and sesame oil sauce. Unlike chow mein, where the noodles are fried until crispy, lo mein noodles are first boiled, then tossed in the sauce briefly just before serving.
