Inside My Table #67 | Excerpt
FRESH Edible Education
Given the gravity of the Texas obesity statistics—nearly 50 percent of Houston fourth-graders, for example, are overweight to obese— we were delighted to visit two HISD schools determined to buck the trend with hands-on edible education. These experimental projects are funded and supported by far-sighted local businesses, parents and teachers, and they are changing the way the kids think about food. Take a look.
—By Toby Gilbert
Herod Elementary School Garden Experiment
There is no mistaking the enthusiasm of Master Gardener Marguerite Dunn, whose eyes are following some fourth-grade girls tiptoeing around a raised bed of fragrant lemon thyme to spot a monarch chrysalis. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Dunn says.
The well-sited garden is a lovely oasis with limestone-edged beds and wide pathways, easily visible from the neighborhood sidewalks that surround it. Or is she talking about the children? “Both,” she confides, “I knew the garden had to be beautiful to work.”
Less than a year ago, Dunn, a former National Geographic staff member and mother of two Herod Elementary School daughters, spearheaded The Herod Garden, single-handedly building a team, quietly overcoming disinterest and obstacles (like lack of water), to persuade parents, officials and the neighborhood that creating an artfully designed garden would teach, enchant and bond students, teachers and the community.
We are sitting in the shade of a large hackberry tree on handsome, untreated wood benches (built by Girl Scout Troop # 4131), admiring the Mexican mint marigold and the children darting about, when a dapper man walking a plump beagle passes by outside the garden fence. He waves from the sidewalk.
“He’s one of our community gardeners,” Dunn tells me. “When school is out for the summer or during long holidays, people in the neighborhood take over the care and feeding of the Herod Garden.”
Dunn smiles and wipes sunscreen out of her eyes. “You know, this neighborhood has block parties now,” she tells me. “At the last one, a neighbor handed me his wife’s PhD thesis; it was on school gardens.”
Are we in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry? Dunn agrees that the garden has a calming, connecting effect on everyone, “Yes, we all notice it,” she continues, “Jenny Summers at Roberts Elementary calls her schoolyard garden Camp Slowdown.” Dunn observes several clusters of children puttering, unrushed, unscheduled in the Herod garden. Each of the 35 classes at Herod has its own marked bed to plant, care-for and harvest. Staring at the salad greens sprouting in one bed, she asks, “Did you know that in Bexar County, one-third of the schools have gardens?”
Why is Houston lagging behind San Antonio?
Dunn collaborated with Urban Harvest, the Herod PTO, HISD and local businesses and volunteers, to create a lattice-work of what she calls “our many stakeholders.” Building such a team is, she says, is the first essential ingredient in a healthy and enduring schoolyard garden. For more information or to contribute to the Herod Elementary School Garden, you may contact Dunn at 713-664-4315.
Sylvan Rodriguez Elementary School: Culinary Classroom & Gourmet Garden Project
Visit Kellie Karavias’ culinary-garden after-school program at Sylvan Rodriguez Elementary School and you will discover animated fourth- and fifth-graders who are not only growing food, but also learning how to cook it. With evident (and much-deserved) pride in their new-found garden/recipes knowledge, the students greet me brimming with food news they can’t wait to share.
Je’Von says he likes the eggs-in-a-frame they learned to make in class and makes it at home. “I didn’t like the yolk before, but here I tasted it. It’s actually good.”
Garrett, age 10, looks like the chef he wants to become. “I love the Thai chicken skewers we make,” he says and every one of the kids nods in agreement.
Nine-year-old Guadalupe says now she is growing a fruit tree in a pot at home because she “likes helping things grow that make food.”
“I found out I love pesto. Now I make it for my little brother and me,” Astrid tells me.
According to Karavias, the eagerness is contagious — at home, the students are changing the way their families shop, cook and eat.
Fourth grader Nefthaly raises her hand to say, “Yeah, now when we grocery shop, my mom always asks me to read the labels. Even when there are pictures of fruit, it doesn’t mean it has fruit in it.”
Their enthusiasm is even more impressive when I learn that all 1,000 of the children attending Sylvan Rodriguez are from the low-income neighborhoods surrounding it. The students are introduced by Karavias as her chefs. They file professionally into the room, dressed in full chef regalia of toque, coat, apron and neckerchief, ready to greet a visitor with a firm handshake.
Karavias, who is beautiful and clearly beloved by her students, explains there were only spaces for 22 students, “So I held a job fair, and any child who wanted to join our program had to fill out an application. They didn’t have to have experience, but they did have to write why they wanted to be a culinary gardener.”
Each applicant then had a personal interview with Karavias. She says, “It’s a lot of work for me and a lot for the kids. I tell them, ‘Only students who want to learn are going to be hired.’” The student gardener-chefs will spend two days a week cooking and two days in the garden and they will write food reviews, food memories and investigative food stories.
In the teachers’ lounge, where the kitchen labs take place, the chefs are humming to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons playing in the background as they get ready to make seven-ingredient pizzas. A hulking soda vending machine in the corner is ignored.
I overhear fifth-grader DreJohn, “Those kids didn’t even try.” Karavias explains that DreJohn is referring to last-month’s Jamie’s Kitchen video about British chef Jamie Oliver trying to teach culinary skills to a group of sullen, 15-year-old high school drop-outs.
Karavias adds, “That video set the expectation standard. It had a big impact on the students. They really saw what happens if you get a great chance to learn and then blow it by being irresponsible, late, dirty, rude. You fail.”
The training works. This year the Sylvan Rodriguez student gardener/ cooks have catered a baby shower, birthday parties for kids at school and a mural dedication at a new HISD early-learning school.
“Mrs. K, mushrooms don’t agree with my palate,” D’Ambra announces to the roomful of concentrating chefs’ amicably chopping, washing and stirring.
“What do we do about that?” Karavias asks her.
Smiling, D’Ambra looks up when she answers, “We taste them anyway.”
Karavias is an art teacher who, along with Carol Randolph, has headed the two-year-old culinary-garden after-school program at Sylvan Rodriguez. Inventing her way as she went along, Karavias says, “All I knew was I want my kids to have the best quality of everything: food, utensils, everything.”
With help from Urban Harvest, Whole Foods Kirby and other local businesses, the student chef-gardeners are creating nourishing food from seed to plate and it is making them hungry for more. To find out more or to contribute, contact Karavias at 713-295-3870.
