all the food that's fit to print The Education Issue - Slow Food

Teaching the Next Generation of Eaters
— By Richard Villadóniga
How to get middle schoolers to think about food
remember reading Fast Food Nation for the
I first time and thinking to myself that I had
to share it with my students. I wanted each of
them to know exactly what was going on each
time they ingested another so-called “Happy”
Meal. Apparently I was not alone; Eric Schlosser
followed up with a children’s version called Chew
On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About
Fast Food.
As a middle school social studies teacher I
know firsthand that getting kids to think about
the food they are eating, what’s in it, and where
it comes from is no easy task—especially at this
age. They are beyond the point where having
them simply grow a few sprouts of anything
in a small pot will really mean something to
them, but they are not quite at the intellectual
level of high school students when it comes to
having a provocative discussion. Sometimes it
takes potty humor to get middle schoolers to
pay attention, and you must always be energetic
and entertaining, but with Chew On This, I could
read one gripping passage after another to my
students—you could hear a pin drop—and I
could follow them up with good discussions on
how it all related to their lives and diets. It’s a
magnificent tool to capture my students’ interest
and a great segue into my annual food unit.
Over a period of two to three weeks, my
students read the latest articles on sustainable
farming and answer critical thinking questions
about what they read. We talk about the types of
things they eat in a typical week. I bring in food
and they try to guess where it was produced—
mangoes from Mexico, walnuts from California,
pasta from Italy, etc. We are pretty fortunate to
live in northeast Florida, where a long growing
season and a tradition of agriculture allow us to
produce many crops throughout the year, so I
am sure to include local foods (such as potatoes,
cabbage, and datil peppers) into the mix. I drive
home the point that the average American meal
travels 1,500 miles from farm to table and that this
distance has great ecological, economic, and social
consequences. Slowly but surely, the concept of
eating locally and in accordance with the seasons
begins to sink in. Though I may not make converts
of them all, by midway through the unit, most of
them are at least questioning their own diets and
the relationship they never knew they had with
their food and the people who produce it.
We also talk about the problems of the
mainstream approach to food production, such as
the alarming use of child slaves in African cacao
plantations, and alternatives (fair trade chocolate,
for example). This really gets the kids thinking.
(“They use child slaves to make my chocolate bar?
What can we do about this?”)
I try to make the food unit personal. I show
a photo-presentation of the 15,000-mile road
trip I took across the US last summer during
which I documented endangered foods and food
traditions and the stories of the individuals that
are working to preserve them. We analyze our
We analyze our own
school cafeteria menus
and circle the items that
were produced locally,
in season, and that sound
nutritious; there aren’t too
many circles on the page
when we are done
own school cafeteria menus and circle the items
that were produced in Florida, those that are in
season, and the ones that sound nutritious. As
you can imagine, there aren’t too many circles
on the page when we are done with the exercise.
The culminating assignment of the unit is for
my students to write a five-paragraph persuasive
letter to the school cafeteria manager urging
her to incorporate more local, seasonal, organic
food into the school menus. This conveniently
happens to be a great way for my students to hone
the critical thinking and writing skills that are
measured in our state’s standardized tests.
Finally, as a treat at the end, we watch the
educationally enhanced version of “Supersize Me”
together and I get to witness not only Morgan
Spurlock’s incredible transformation, but that of
my students from ignorant eaters to informed
ones. And that’s what teaching is all about.
Richard Villadóniga is a geography teacher in St. Johns County,
Florida. He is the convivium leader of the recently founded First
Coast convivium. Read about his Endangered Foods Tour at www.
eat-american.com.
The snail | spring 2008
9