I teach at an innovative and award-winning, (KN-12th) dual-language, public, charter school in Delaware with a diverse student population (40% minorities and 50% low-income). All of my students study the Greek language and global studies. Our school is located on the outskirts of Wilmington. Our nearly 2,000 students come from all over New Castle County. I truly love working at a diverse school with a focus on global citizenship.
I teach Food Studies, African-American History and Culture, Advanced Placement Human Geography, and Dual-Enrollment U.S.
History to 10th-12th grade students. I am also the KN-12th grade garden coordinator and one of the leaders of the Green Team on campus. Our school is a participant in the Eco-Schools program and we are currently pursuing 5 pathways: sustainable foods, waste and consumption, energy, schoolyard habitat, and healthy living. Our school is the first charter school and one of only five schools in Delaware to receive the Eco-Schools USA Green Flag award for excellence in environmental action and learning. Our Green Team has worked incredibly hard to implement several major projects to educate students about how to be environmental stewards of the planet. For example, we now have a recycling program!
Food Studies is an innovative and interdisciplinary semester-long course that inspires students to become food citizens, individuals who understand that their food choices have a meaningful impact on personal, environmental, and community health. The curriculum's interactive lessons explore food's relationship to culture, the environment, and power, integrating science, ELA, and social studies learning.
We will take a multi-faceted approach to learning about food through exposure to excellent writing about food, agriculture, and environmental sustainability; cooking labs that will help us learn through the preparation and tasting of food, and interactions with experts like farmers and other food producers through field trips to local institutions and farms.
The course has many objectives for participants:
*To understand food as a reflection of a society's values and priorities.
*To understand the importance of food as a foundation for individual, community, and environmental wellbeing.
*To understand food as an avenue to empowerment, citizenship, and social justice.
The reading, analysis, discussion, writing, and preparation and enjoyment of food that takes place through the course provides the knowledge and experiences for participants to achieve these goals.
Due to being a life-long learner, I enjoy pursuing opportunities that require me have a command of critical ideas and skills, and, equally important, the capacity to reflect on, evaluate, and learn from my teaching so that it continually improves. A perfectionist at heart, I work arduously to meticulously plan my Food Studies lessons, to use a variety of instructional strategies, to motivate students, and to encourage them to appreciate multiple perspectives.
By having access to these materials, I can deepen my content knowledge of the food system and directly share it with my students. I am the only teacher in my state offering this course. I want to become an expert in Food Studies.
