We’re back. I’m so grateful our partnership with Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy will continue during this strange school year but also anxious about how to execute our program via distance learning. For now, I’m excited to collaborate with our incredible third grade teaching team and know together we’ll be able to offer something meaningful. We’ve decided to pilot Edible Social Studies home kits where we send home supplies and ingredients for two weeks’ worth of classes in advance. Our hope is this will ensure every student has access to what they need to participate in the live class sessions on Zoom, but we’ll have to try it out to see if it’s actually successful. There will likely be challenges I haven’t thought of in advance, but that’s been the case ever since we launched The Breakfast Project!
It’s sad to see so much more of our budget going towards packaging rather than to fresh, local produce. I’m still working on ways to reduce waste and will try to incorporate discussions about reusing and recycling into our classes. Kit #1 contains foods to represent the first two groups of people to live in what is now San Francisco, the Ohlone (who thrived for thousands of years pre-contact) and the Spanish (who arrived in the 18th century). We also included a jar of the homemade granola the third graders made in second grade last spring right before the school closures happened. They were meant to sell the granola as part of a student-run farmstand to culminate their unit on the local food economy, but in absence of that opportunity, I’m happy they will get to enjoy the fruits of their labor with their families at home and that the granola will foster some cross-grade connections.
For our first class, students steeped organic yerba buena leaves in their own reusable tea bags in hot water and sweetened the tea with local blackberry honey. While enjoying our tea together, we talked about the hunter gatherer lifestyle and how most of us don’t know any words from languages indigenous to this area. “Yerba Buena” was a name given to the land by the Spanish in response to the wild mint they found growing in the region, but in a video about contemporary Ohlone chefs and activists Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino, we were able to hear them use the Chochenyo word for the mint. Our breakout room question asked the third graders what they would name their city now if they had the chance. A few of their responses: Peace, Nature, and Trees.
