Edible Schoolyard and A Night in the Global Village

The Edible Schoolyard is the baby of Alice Waters a Chef, who in 1994 wanted a way to improve upon school lunch progams. She said of children "if they grow it, cook it, then they'll want to eat it." It is a non-profit organization at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. The teachers at MLK Jr. are able to use the Schoolyard as a way to integrate social studies, math, science, and life into their classrooms. Everyone is a learner in the Edible Schoolyard, each person does their part, from planting to picking.

The intrgration takes a very common sense approach, they learn about plant species, and where they can be found in science and social studies. Math comes in the kitchen, where they are preparing the food, mixing ingredients. These all come together to build life lessons that the children take with them. I liked how they used the most common materials for tools in the kitchen; the children were using wine bottles as rolling pins. I would have never thought about using them for that. I like the idea of children tasting the fruits of their labor.


A Night in the Global Village was very interesting as well, it is located at the Heifer Ranch in Arkansas. This shows the Rocky Mountain Middle School from Denver, Colorado learning about different countries and the poverty that they live in. The children pick numbers, shown around the ranch,where they have four living conditions set up; Guatamala, Tailand, Apalacha which is a Refugee camp and Zambia.

Each location has different amenities Guatamala gets all the water, and have the nicer beds, the others get food, with the exception of the refugees, they get nothing food, wood, and on top of that they can't communicate with the other villages, which is just carrots, potatoes, onions, nothing special. The experience is to allow children to see how other countries that have nothing live and survive. It will also make them think about all that they have, and maybe change them and their feelings.

I think showing classes podcasts like these would be helpful, these kids are changing the world with the things they learned from both of these experiences. I would like to see public schools in Mobile doing something like the Edible Schoolyard, especially some of the schools like Chastang, Mae Eanes some of the ones that the children don't care and the parents don't care either. I think it would teacher some of the students what it would be like to take care of yourself, I remember taking a cooking class in middle school and I loved learning how to make different foods, it also lets you experiment with different flavors and spices.