The second graders learned about the life and times of Larry Itliong this week. In the classroom we read excerpts from the book Journey for Justice by Dawn B. Mabalon and Gayle Romasanta and illustrated by Andre Sibayan. We watched a Smithsonian Folklife short film about the role Filipinos played in the formation of the United Farm Workers as told from the perspective of the Chicano social activist and musician Augustín Lira. Many students in California learn about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, but Larry Itliong’s contributions to the fight for farm labor justice often go unmentioned.
In the kitchen we made lumpia, a spring roll popular in Filipino food culture, from scratch. First, students filled and rolled lumpia wrappers for frying. Then we made our own batch of filling, consisting of lots of fresh vegetables, to share with either the next class or our wonderful community of volunteers.
The process of making lumpia together connects to the dumplings we made last week and to the Vietnamese spring rolls we made with rice paper in first grade Edible Social Studies, reminding us of the ways in which food from around the world is both similar and different. We enjoyed the lumpia with a tomato-based chili garlic sauce and a Thai chili pineapple hot sauce. One student had fourths and Ms. Butler said she enjoyed them so much she would write a poem about them.
