We read a book this week called The Rainbow Flag: Bold, Bright, and Beautiful written by Michelle Millar Fisher and illustrated by Kat Kuang. It tells the story of how Harvey Milk, Gilbert Baker, and their friends created the pride flag in 1978 for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. Many of us learned a new word, vexillology: the study of flags.
In the kitchen classroom, with two neighborhood rainbow flags flying in sight, we made edible versions of the Philadelphia Pride flag that debuted in 2017. We learned what Gilbert Baker meant for each stripe to symbolize: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for peace, and violet for spirit. We learned that the black and brown stripes represent Black and brown members of the LGBTQ+ community.
This was such a fun culmination of all that students have learned over the years. A lot of fine-motor skills were involved in creating a strikingly colorful buffet. The season we used strawberries, tangerines, pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, purple sweet potato, candied ginger, crushed chocolate cookies, and fresh whipped cream to construct our rainbow pride parfaits. They were so pretty and equally as tasty—a toast to a brilliant, enduring symbol of the Castro District and the city of San Francisco.
