Cooked (Click for Project Description)
Teacher Reflection:
Julio Zuniga and I have been teaching together for two years now and he has turned into a great friend. With great friendships come great experiences. With friendships that are cultivated while teaching, you get some pretty funny stories too. Last year, when we were teaching the class of 2020, our students pointed something peculiar about both me and Julio. “You guys eat junk!” our students yelled at us. They tsk tsk tsked at Julio’s consumption of soda and energy drinks. They lectured me about my too-sweet sweet tooth and my love of salty treats like chips. Those students had come to us from an 8th grade class that concentrated on food. They had created a documentary about food with their Humanities and Science/Math teacher. They read Michael Pollan’s work The Omnivore’s Dilemma. They came to us with a wealth of knowledge that inspired me to look closely into my eating habits. I started to read more Michael Pollan, and when the documentary based on his book Cooked came out, I decided that I needed to make a life change and start cooking for myself more. Both Julio and I had conversations with both of our significant others, and the four of us began this school year with a simple goal: Learn to cook and cook more. What better way to learn something new than to learn it beside our students? During this project, students read excerpts of Cooked by Michael Pollan. In Spanish, they learned the vocabulary of cooking, learning how to give directions and list ingredients and talk about food. They watched pieces of the documentary on Netflix. We discussed our eating habits. Chef Jenn Felmley came and visited the class to talk about cooking, her experience as a personal chef and her experience in the restaurant industry. She also did a cooking demonstration and all students had hands on learning making spring rolls and dipping sauce. Chef Daniel Callaway came to talk about his experience cooking, and he made fresh guacamole with the class. Our academic coach, Jessica Garcia, helped students edit recipes, helping them create something visually pleasing for this final product. Our education specialist Tom Schwartz helped find strategies so every single student could find their way into this project. 100% of our class contributed to this book in your hands. Kurt Schwartz, the Physics/Math teacher we work with, began work with the students on a garden where we could grow our ingredients. He and I started a once a month office hour where we would teach together after school while cooking something for our students to snack on. In Physics/Math, Kurt Schwartz and teacher candidate Nick Cypher created solar ovens with the students, studying the physics of light while baking cookies and nachos with the help of the sun. I always count myself so lucky to teach where I teach with who I teach with. Working in a collaborative environment with hard-working, passionate, and funny adults, keeps me creative and contantly thinking. Working with inspiring students and their incredibly supportive and loving families keeps me inspired.
Julio Zuniga and I have been teaching together for two years now and he has turned into a great friend. With great friendships come great experiences. With friendships that are cultivated while teaching, you get some pretty funny stories too. Last year, when we were teaching the class of 2020, our students pointed something peculiar about both me and Julio. “You guys eat junk!” our students yelled at us. They tsk tsk tsked at Julio’s consumption of soda and energy drinks. They lectured me about my too-sweet sweet tooth and my love of salty treats like chips. Those students had come to us from an 8th grade class that concentrated on food. They had created a documentary about food with their Humanities and Science/Math teacher. They read Michael Pollan’s work The Omnivore’s Dilemma. They came to us with a wealth of knowledge that inspired me to look closely into my eating habits. I started to read more Michael Pollan, and when the documentary based on his book Cooked came out, I decided that I needed to make a life change and start cooking for myself more. Both Julio and I had conversations with both of our significant others, and the four of us began this school year with a simple goal: Learn to cook and cook more. What better way to learn something new than to learn it beside our students? During this project, students read excerpts of Cooked by Michael Pollan. In Spanish, they learned the vocabulary of cooking, learning how to give directions and list ingredients and talk about food. They watched pieces of the documentary on Netflix. We discussed our eating habits. Chef Jenn Felmley came and visited the class to talk about cooking, her experience as a personal chef and her experience in the restaurant industry. She also did a cooking demonstration and all students had hands on learning making spring rolls and dipping sauce. Chef Daniel Callaway came to talk about his experience cooking, and he made fresh guacamole with the class. Our academic coach, Jessica Garcia, helped students edit recipes, helping them create something visually pleasing for this final product. Our education specialist Tom Schwartz helped find strategies so every single student could find their way into this project. 100% of our class contributed to this book in your hands. Kurt Schwartz, the Physics/Math teacher we work with, began work with the students on a garden where we could grow our ingredients. He and I started a once a month office hour where we would teach together after school while cooking something for our students to snack on. In Physics/Math, Kurt Schwartz and teacher candidate Nick Cypher created solar ovens with the students, studying the physics of light while baking cookies and nachos with the help of the sun. I always count myself so lucky to teach where I teach with who I teach with. Working in a collaborative environment with hard-working, passionate, and funny adults, keeps me creative and contantly thinking. Working with inspiring students and their incredibly supportive and loving families keeps me inspired.
Student Reflections:
Alana B.: With my aunt, she cooks every night. Being able to cook with her was more of an experience of our family bonding experience and she is able to just throws everything together. She’s going around the kitchen with all these spices everywhere. She’s able to do everything so quickly and she’s so organized! Watching her cook and cooking with her was so impactful for me. Going over to my auntie’s house shows me that’s how I want to be when I grow up. I want to be able to cook for my family and provide for them like she does. She comes home after a long day and makes a home-cooked meal. Watching her cook was an awesome way to show me what to do.”
Ian W.: Chef Jenn came into our classroom to talk to us about food and showed us how to cook vegetarian spring roll. While she was in our class, she talked to us about how each of our actions affect our climate and local community. She also talked about the business side of being a chef. She went into detail on how she looks into where her client in staying and makes her evaluation on how much they should pay. She then went into how important trust is in the restaurant business. Cooking was very fun, we got to make two sauces and two spring roll, all from scratch. We started by soaking the rice sheets and then laying out all of our ingredients. Then we put all the ingredients in the roll, and rolled it up! Then we made the sauce in mason jars and cleaned up. Finally, we ate!
Grace H.: I really liked making my solar oven because it helped me get creative. It made me feel really smart knowing what I was doing. I think we did a good design. I think at the beginning we didn’t do too well because the wood didn’t cut but then we came up with a new design. The highest temperature we got it to was 85 degrees!
Cooper M.: In this project we had to create a bilingual recipe and cook it with our partner. We also had guest speakers come to talk to us about cooking. One speaker, Jenn Felmley, was really interesting to listen to. She talked about cooking technique and what it was like working as a professional chef. I liked hearing about her experience in cooking and it motivated me to cook myself. We also had another speaker visit, Dan Callaway. We made guacamole and he taught us how to slice avocados. This project was fun, and I learned a lot from it. My partner was Teia, and it was fun working with her since she's one of my closest friends. Our recipe was lasagna, and it was cooked at her house with her mom. Also, I did some research on the history of lasagna for this project, and it was really fun. I used many of our learning outcomes in this project. I demonstrated work ethic by turning my work in on time and staying on task. I demonstrated collaboration because my partner and I communicated and worked together to complete the work. At exhibition, I really liked how I spoke and my oral communication in general. Our recipe's words flowed nicely, and I feel that we explained the process of cooking it really well. I'm proud of the final product. In this project, I used responsibility, respect, and integrity. I showed responsibility and integrity by doing what I was supposed to and when, and I respected my partner by doing what I needed to do. At exhibition, I was pretty proud of the recipe. It was cool explaining the project to the people that were there and I liked the interest people took in our work.
Allie L.: For this project, we were tasked to create a functioning solar oven that would be constructed and designed by us, and a recipe page with a partner that has the recipe for a traditional family food. It was to include step by step instructions, and the recipe itself in both english and Spanish. The type of group for this projects was partners. My partner was Natalya. We worked really well together because our ideas bounced off of each other's which led us to finding a way to take on the challenge option of making the oven collapsible. What went well in terms of collaboration was our group's ability to both be doing different things so we could finish the oven quicker and correct our recipe page, but also knowing what we were both doing at all times. If we didn’t do this, our final oven and recipe page wouldn’t have exceeded the expectations, that way it did. Some things I could improve as a group member for this project is by being less controlling of the final product, and just going with the flow and trusting that it would be done and somewhat work. If I did this, I would have enjoyed creating the oven more, and making my recipe.I feel like I did really well in terms of the classes learning outcomes. Overall, I felt like I did extremely well in this project. I offered a lot to the group by just being a hard worker and not settling for anything less that something I was really proud of. If I had to grade myself in terms of our classes values and learning outcomes, I would give myself an A+ because I always was aware of all of them, and did all of them at all times. At the exhibition where we presented these things, I felt like compared to our first exhibition, I invited more people in to talk to, and just did a better job of explaining my work, and how I went above and beyond.
Alana B.: With my aunt, she cooks every night. Being able to cook with her was more of an experience of our family bonding experience and she is able to just throws everything together. She’s going around the kitchen with all these spices everywhere. She’s able to do everything so quickly and she’s so organized! Watching her cook and cooking with her was so impactful for me. Going over to my auntie’s house shows me that’s how I want to be when I grow up. I want to be able to cook for my family and provide for them like she does. She comes home after a long day and makes a home-cooked meal. Watching her cook was an awesome way to show me what to do.”
Ian W.: Chef Jenn came into our classroom to talk to us about food and showed us how to cook vegetarian spring roll. While she was in our class, she talked to us about how each of our actions affect our climate and local community. She also talked about the business side of being a chef. She went into detail on how she looks into where her client in staying and makes her evaluation on how much they should pay. She then went into how important trust is in the restaurant business. Cooking was very fun, we got to make two sauces and two spring roll, all from scratch. We started by soaking the rice sheets and then laying out all of our ingredients. Then we put all the ingredients in the roll, and rolled it up! Then we made the sauce in mason jars and cleaned up. Finally, we ate!
Grace H.: I really liked making my solar oven because it helped me get creative. It made me feel really smart knowing what I was doing. I think we did a good design. I think at the beginning we didn’t do too well because the wood didn’t cut but then we came up with a new design. The highest temperature we got it to was 85 degrees!
Cooper M.: In this project we had to create a bilingual recipe and cook it with our partner. We also had guest speakers come to talk to us about cooking. One speaker, Jenn Felmley, was really interesting to listen to. She talked about cooking technique and what it was like working as a professional chef. I liked hearing about her experience in cooking and it motivated me to cook myself. We also had another speaker visit, Dan Callaway. We made guacamole and he taught us how to slice avocados. This project was fun, and I learned a lot from it. My partner was Teia, and it was fun working with her since she's one of my closest friends. Our recipe was lasagna, and it was cooked at her house with her mom. Also, I did some research on the history of lasagna for this project, and it was really fun. I used many of our learning outcomes in this project. I demonstrated work ethic by turning my work in on time and staying on task. I demonstrated collaboration because my partner and I communicated and worked together to complete the work. At exhibition, I really liked how I spoke and my oral communication in general. Our recipe's words flowed nicely, and I feel that we explained the process of cooking it really well. I'm proud of the final product. In this project, I used responsibility, respect, and integrity. I showed responsibility and integrity by doing what I was supposed to and when, and I respected my partner by doing what I needed to do. At exhibition, I was pretty proud of the recipe. It was cool explaining the project to the people that were there and I liked the interest people took in our work.
Allie L.: For this project, we were tasked to create a functioning solar oven that would be constructed and designed by us, and a recipe page with a partner that has the recipe for a traditional family food. It was to include step by step instructions, and the recipe itself in both english and Spanish. The type of group for this projects was partners. My partner was Natalya. We worked really well together because our ideas bounced off of each other's which led us to finding a way to take on the challenge option of making the oven collapsible. What went well in terms of collaboration was our group's ability to both be doing different things so we could finish the oven quicker and correct our recipe page, but also knowing what we were both doing at all times. If we didn’t do this, our final oven and recipe page wouldn’t have exceeded the expectations, that way it did. Some things I could improve as a group member for this project is by being less controlling of the final product, and just going with the flow and trusting that it would be done and somewhat work. If I did this, I would have enjoyed creating the oven more, and making my recipe.I feel like I did really well in terms of the classes learning outcomes. Overall, I felt like I did extremely well in this project. I offered a lot to the group by just being a hard worker and not settling for anything less that something I was really proud of. If I had to grade myself in terms of our classes values and learning outcomes, I would give myself an A+ because I always was aware of all of them, and did all of them at all times. At the exhibition where we presented these things, I felt like compared to our first exhibition, I invited more people in to talk to, and just did a better job of explaining my work, and how I went above and beyond.
