Food is Elementary

I had the distinct pleasure of teaching our Food is Elementary program at Clinton Elementary and Indianola Informal K-8 this school year. One of the amazing things about these two schools is that they are more than what they appear to be.

Both are amazing communities where people come together and share their lives, common experiences, struggles and the like. Parents are invested in and get involved with their childrens educations. There is strong parent support. After a year of being a "visiting" teacher I truly feel like an integral part of these schools and see first hand the important work they are doing in their students lives.

As the 2010 Ted Prize winner, Jamie Oliver was given a chance to make one wish that would change the world and to do it in front of an audience that was eager to make his wish come true.  

His wish announced on February 10, 2010 was to teach every child about food in order to confront the health issues that plague our communities - childhood obesity, diabetes, etc. and set a course for a healthy future.

Local Matters and Food is Elementary were recently featured in The Columbus Dispatch! To read the article and learn more about our work, visit the following link:

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2009/10/08/1_L...

CDC Headstart is taking leadership on providing nutrition education to Columbus area children and their families. This year Local Matters will be expanding our "Food is Elementary" curriculum to 4 CDC Headstart schools: Generations, Gtyree, Captial Park and the OSU Schoenbaum Center.  We launch our Fall Programming the week of Sept.14th and are thriled to get back in the classroom.

The following excerpt is from a recent NY Times article, "6 Food Mistakes Parents Make":

"Fussiness about food is a normal part of a child’s development. Young children are naturally neophobic — they have a distrust of the new. Even the most determined parents can be cowed by a child’s resolve to eat nothing rather than try something new. As a result, parents often give in, deciding that a bowl of Cocoa Puffs or a Pop-Tart, while not ideal, must be better than no food at all...parents feel like it’s their job to just make their children eat something...but it’s really their job to serve a variety of healthy foods and get their children exposed to foods.”

After learning last week about the people, customs, and foods of India, our students continued their culinary world tour with a stop in the Middle East. The Middle East is a broad term, and means many different things politically, religiously and culturally. For the purposes of this lesson, the Middle East was defined as being comprised of countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (Greece, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt).

Lesson number 19 of Food is Elementary focused on China. In this lesson, students learned about using a wok as a way to cook food. They also discovered soy beans and their great versatility. Students also participated in the creation of a delicious Chinese stir-fry dish!

The lesson began by locating China on a map. The Food Educators explained that China has a huge population of more than one billion people. Because of this large population, starvation has long been a problem in China. As a result, the Chinese people have been very resourceful in developing their traditional cuisine.