I was told this story by a local 5th grade teacher, and thought it was worth sharing. It seems that she was very excited and interested in getting her kids outside - into the school yard as way to help them connect to all sorts of issues and concepts in a personal and local manner. Sometimes when she took the class outside things went well - the kids listed to instructions, they explored, asked questions, and made connections between what they saw and flt right there with ideas they were discussing back in the classroom.

At other times, however, the kids were just hard to manage. They couldn't stand still - often chasing each other and doing all sorts of energetic activities.

Sometimes the behavior was great and they learned a lot, but too often, they were just too antsy and fidgety. But she couldn't figure out why they were acting up on certain occasions.

She kept track of the time of day they went outside - and saw no pattern.

She looked at subject matter - no pattern.Weather - no.

One day, while watching the kids head out to recess, she figured it out. When she took the class out of one side door or front door of the building, the activities went well. When she used the other side door - the same one used to head out for recess - the kids would be much more of a challenge. The children had "learned" - not necessarily conscious knowledge - that when they went out that one door, they would be running around and burning off energy. By using that door, she was setting up expectations for a different type of behavior than she really wanted. 

To test this, she tried taking the class out through one of the other doors, then walking them around to the places they were to investigate. Success - better attention! Now she merely avoids the "recess" door and has much more success - even out on the play field.

Most of my teaching career has been spent in informal garden spaces. A part of nurturing student relationships with gardens and to the foods that we eat is by cooking and preparing foods with them. I can recall a time in my career where our garden had a huge late fall harvest of squash, cilantro, and carrots. To highlight rainbow eating, I planned to make crispy spring rolls (but actually fall rolls...) with the kids in the afterschool program. Before the students arrived, I spent close to an hour prepping for this lesson: peeling and chopping all the veggies; mixing the sauces; and gathering materials.

When the students arrived, we had a lot of fun assembly-lining up the veggies, rolling them up in their rice paper blankets and then listening to them sizzle in the hot oil. When it came time to eat, we enjoyed them together, chatting about which of the sauces were our favorite: a sticky sweet and sour or a salty peanut sauce. During the debrief of the lesson, a student asked, "Miss, where did these come from?" I stopped for a moment, “Well, from our garden. I chopped everything up.” Up until that moment I had forgotten about all the preparations I had made to carry out this lesson. This student’s question got me wondering about what learning experiences we missed out on because I essentially did all the work in making this snack together. I had made a grave error in my instruction because the students didn't get to see the veggies we grew together end up on our plates; the connection I sought to foster had been lost.

As a reflective practitioner passionate about fostering seed-to-stomach connections with young people, I set out to explore how I can more fully include young students in the seemingly “scary” part of cooking – chopping and measuring. From then on, after cooking with students for 3 more years, I have slowly begun to refine and harness how to teach children difficult kitchen tasks. Below are the things that helped me feel more confident handing kids the knife!

Reflect

First, you must not dwell in the past about all of the things you maybe "should have" done. As educators, we make mistakes, learn from them, and move forward.

To begin, ask yourself why you are excluding children from certain parts of the cooking process. Is it because you are nervous about them using a knife? Are you intending whatever it is you are cooking to look or taste a certain way? Under a time crunch? I urge you to deeply reflect on your responses and dig into them. You may find that a lot of your answers have nothing to do with the students or their abilities and have everything to do with you and your fears. Reflection and action should always be your first step.

Elicit Student Voice

When you begin, ask students what they already know about cooking. Many students may already be cooking at home and have skills you are not aware of. Students are experts in their own lives and bring a whole wealth of knowledge to any setting they are in. As an educator, you should be highlighting this knowledge. If you find a student or two who are familiar with chopping veggies, have them teach the rest of the class! Or have them model while you explain. Pass the instructor hat to them.

Risky Play

There is a whole body of research on why students should engage in risky play. I would argue that having students handle knives falls into this category. You are showing students that you trust them and that you believe they can do things that many other adults may not think they can do. As an instructor, showing your students that you believe they can do hard things (and will help them accomplish said things) can lead to overall stronger teacher-student relationships. Hand the student the knife and try not to hover over them, they’ll be okay!

Fine Motor Skills

Inviting your students to chop and peel the veggies allows them to continue to develop their fine motor skills. Depending on development, holding smaller objects such as a peeler and using it with enough pressure to slice off the skin of a carrot is excellent for developing fine motor skills. The same sentiment can be said about knives because of the attention to how the knife is being held in relation to where their hands. If students are either too young to handle knives or are still developing fine motor skills, there is still a plethora of tasks for them to partake in.

Scaffolding Participation

Below is an outline of what I have seen work for children at different developmental stages during various cooking and baking activities. This is not a black-and-white list. Development looks different for everybody, and it takes you knowing your students to challenge them when appropriate. Maybe we’re not ready for slicing but that doesn’t mean we can’t try a two-hands-on-the-knife rough chop! Remember, lowering your expectations of what the final product may look and taste like is crucial. Most of the fun (and learning) is in doing the activity together anyway! Your students got this.

In Conclusion

I hope this simple outline helped inspire you to involve kiddos in your cooking. Cooking with students not only helps develop life-skills but it also aids in fostering relationships (to each other and to our foods). There is a plethora of social-emotional benefits that come along with including young folks in risky tasks. Letting students mince the garlic or chop the carrots shows them that 1) their instructor trusts them, 2) they are a valued member of the team, and 3) there is joy to be had in working together! Happy cooking!

Gardens can be spaces where young people come together to create connections with one another, with place, and with food. Furthermore, gardens can support students in becoming open-minded, open-hearted agents of positive change in their communities.

One way to intentionally build community in the garden is to create a garden based community agreement that is revisited every day with your students.

Tasting Tour:

Before you lead your students through a tasting tour of the garden, it is important you go over a few important rules about harvesting plants with care. Remind them that they should only eat the plants that you invite them to eat, and to always ask before tasting something new. Be sure to tell them we will only be picking a little bit of every plant we eat because we share the garden with lots of other people who would love to taste the garden too. Going over these rules reinforces how it is important that we care for ourselves, for the plants and for others. Once the rules are made clear, you can encourage them to build a connection with place and food by inviting them to taste some of the plants that are growing in the garden.

Sunflower Planting:

Ask the students to look for some similarities between what people need to grow as a community and what plants need to grow as you go over the instructions. Provide them with an example, such as some plants like to grow close to each other and some plants need lots of space and some people like to be around lots of other people while others like to spend more time on their own.

As you show them how to plant the sunflower, emphasize that gardening is about caring and that we are making a home for this seed. Tell them about The Secret of the Seed (http://wiki.islandwood.org/index.php?title=Secret_of_the_seed) and emphasize how seeds tell us exactly how they want to be planted, just like people might tell us exactly what they need by using verbal or non-verbal communication. Finally, discuss how to take care of the seed so that it can grow into a strong sunflower full of its own seeds. This section provides a great opportunity to add parallels between plant care and taking care of the people around us. For instance, tell them that they need lots of sunshine so it is important to put it in a place where it can get sunshine, to check in with the plant every other day by looking at its body language and how dry the soil is, and that when it becomes about a foot tall it will be ready to be planted outside.

Once you are done planting, ask them: “What might be some of the similarities between what people need to grow as a community and what plants need to grow?” This section might be difficult for students whose abstract thought has not developed enough to see the parallels so be ready to scaffold them as needed.

The Community Agreement:

Before you start this section, you will need a large paper with sunflower seeds drawn at the bottom with each of the students names on it and a line to demonstrate the soil above them (reference the picture below).

Building on the previous discussion you are going to ask the students: “What do we need to grow as a team this week?” As the students provide you with answers, have students write them down near their seed.

Students are usually quick to provide you with big concepts like respect, cooperation, communication and team work. It is imperative that you push them to break these down into specific things they can do. For example, if a student suggests the word respect ask them to break that down for the team. Ask, “What does respect look like?” this tends to help them think of a concrete way we can show respect such as, listening to one another. Here is a link to demonstrate how to push the students to provide you with more concrete examples of how they can work as a team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF8zL2TRxG0.

Revisiting the Community Agreement:

This is section of the lesson is vital because it reinforces to the students that they are part of a community that will support their growth. They are responsible for their own growth and responsible for supporting their community’s growth too.

At the beginning of the day circle up the students and lay the community agreement in the middle of the circle. Ask them to read what we wrote in the soil yesterday. Then ask them to choose one of those things to focus on for the day but to make sure they keep that to themselves. It will be their personal goal for the day and they will get an opportunity to share it with the group later in the day. Once they have chosen something, ask them to grow a stem about the length of their hand. Setting an intention for the day is their first opportunity to grow today.  

At the end of the day, circle up the students around the sheet again so you can go through an accountability circle. You should start by modeling what you are going to expect them to do.  Share what your intention was for the day and choose a quiet raised hand to share how they noticed you work on your intention that day. For instance, you might have chosen “be positive” as your intention and a student might put their hand up and share, “I noticed you being positive when you encouraged us to keep going when we were tiered.” After the student notices you, you can grow your sunflower the length of your hand. Having worked on your intentions is their second opportunity to grow.

Now the student who noticed you will share his/her intention and any student who has not noticed yet can raise their hand. You can only “notice” someone in your group once; this is important because it ensures that everyone participates and is accountable for their own growth and for the growth of their community members. It can get harder to notice one another as less students are allowed to raise their hands to notice one another, so make sure that you are the last one to notice. This ensures the last student will not be left without someone noticing them.

By the end of the accountability circle everyone should have grown twice that day. You can revisit the community agreement as many times as you think is necessary for your group or class need to. One way you could ensure that it lasts longer is to change how tall they grow every time, for instance they could only be growing an inch every time.

Growing a Sunflower:

Before this section, you will need to have cut out paper in the shape of a sunflower seed, about the size of your hand. You should have as many seeds as you have students.

The last time you go through the accountability circle, the students should draw the sunflower instead of the stem. Take this opportunity to celebrate how much they have grown as a community. Share with them that they have grown so much this week that they have their very own seed to plant in another community of their choice. Once you have celebrated, hand them each a sunflower seed and ask them to write down something they have learned in this community that they would like to share with another community they are a part of.

During your conclusion, you should take the chance to circle back to the sunflowers they planted, and will take home, as reminders of what they have learned and what they want to share with their own community.

The garden is full of opportunities to use metaphors that apply to building community and to personal growth. This lesson intentionally takes advantage of this by creating a structure in which students can draw connections between tangible elements of the garden and abstract concepts such as building community. 

For environmental educators who teach diverse groups of students, it may be difficult to predict how comfortable students of different backgrounds will be when foisted into an outdoor learning environment. Students who grew up going camping with their families bring entirely different perspectives to the learning experience than students who have never spent significant time exploring or learning in the outdoors. With students of all backgrounds, the challenge of nurturing a level of security, curiosity, and ultimately, love, for the natural world requires finding ways to make these spaces emotionally accessible and intriguing. In my experience, if there is one outdoor learning setting that consistently fosters emotional connection and excitement in diverse groups of students, it is an edible garden.

We all have emotional connections to food. Foods hearken memories of specific places, connect us with our cultural heritage, and inform our relationships with loved ones and caretakers. For many of us, food carries complex personal, social, or historical baggage. Whoever we are, for better or for worse, food directly impacts our daily experience of the world. Food is so pervasive that many of us never take the time to consider what it means to us or says about who we are. Bringing students to a garden creates a context to explore these topics and more.

One of my favorite garden lessons involves harvesting herbs together as a group and using them to make tea or bread. IslandWood’s garden educator, Jen Prodzinski, begins these lessons by asking students to go around and share a food that they have made themselves, and who taught them how to make it. It is a brilliant question—simple enough to answer, but with rich emotional weight. Students share about making tortillas in Mexico with their grandmothers, harvesting vegetables in their home gardens with their parents, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with their older siblings, and on and on. Suddenly, everyone has an emotional entry into the lesson at hand.

Through considering their existing relationships to food, students begin to see that this outdoor learning space is a place to which they already have a connection—perhaps even a place where they can find comfort and belonging. Further, when students take on the task of making food together in the garden, they strengthen their relationships with the land and one another, fostering or enhancing their senses of place and community.

Beyond cultivating these emotional connections, a garden provides a rich opportunity for intellectual engagement, in that it can take the familiar and transform it into something strange and new. In mainstream American culture, many people do not see the processes that go in to producing the food they eat every day. Using the garden to help students trace familiar foods back to the soil and sun creates abundant moments of surprise and delight.

Using a garden as a jumping off point in this way, environmental educators can establish a relationship of trust, emotional connection, and mutual sharing with students, a powerful foundation for later lessons that might push them further from their comfort zones. By beginning in a space where all students can find personal meaning, we can help students understand that, whoever they are and whatever their experience, nature is a place for them.