We are back! Working with students in person! In a new outdoor kitchen classroom created around a high-voltage box the modernization project left in the middle of our school’s former edible garden! It’s wonderful!
In preparation for welcoming our third grade students to Edible Social Studies this year, we reviewed many rituals and routines from our time together in first grade, talked about how the classes would be different this year with masks and being outdoors, and read a sweet book by Jillian Tamaki called Our Little Kitchen to remind us how every kitchen has its own energy and culture, just like the one we will create for the first time on the Harvey Milk campus.
Our third grade unit is an edible history of San Francisco. Students were asked to interview someone special in their lives about their history with the city. Many students reported that they have an adult at home who was born and raised in another country or state and moved to the Bay Area for work, safety, love, and/or education. We learned that the word “native” can be used to describe someone who was born here, but that words like “Native,” “Indigenous,” and “First Nations” refer to the Indigenous people of a specific place. Here in San Francisco, we recognize that our program and school operates on the land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, who have lived here for time immemorial and continue to live and thrive here in the present day.
We are lucky in the Bay Area to have Ohlone leaders like Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino of mak-’amham raising awareness of Ohlone foodways and sharing recipes that we can recreate at school. A lot has changed about the food system in the past 250 years and the ingredients in our Ohlone Salad were sourced from local farms rather than gathered, but we all agreed to honor the spirit of Ohlone food even if our meal wasn’t entirely authentic.
In the classroom we watched a short video from PBS’s Native America series called Ohlone Foodways. In the kitchen classroom we made a salad of watercress, spinach (standing in for sorrel), blackberries, flowers, sunflower seeds, popped amaranth, and quail eggs. Students made a dressing by mixing elderberry shrub with sunflower oil and salt. A chef at the Strawberry table ate FIVE servings of salad! On Thursday, we had a special surprise guest, Coach Glenn, which made for a particularly poignant first week back cooking, eating, and laughing together after such a long time apart.
Finally, we want to give heartfelt thanks to the many members of our community who pitched in to install a commercial sink, figure out how to provide shade to our students while they work, sewed coverings so our maple-top work tables can withstand the elements, and who are giving their time to lead the Blueberry table all semester long. We couldn’t do what we do without you and we are so grateful for your energy and support.
