In Marie L Greenwood Academy’s Each One Teach One program, students are cultivating cooking, gardening, horticulture and literary skills thanks to a grant from Whole Foods to their community partner Slow Food USA. Every Wednesday afternoon, students in the Each One Teach One Cooking and Gardening class embark on a food journey. They begin by cooking a new recipe in the classroom, learning how to handle cutlery, the genus and species of their school-grown produce, new vocabulary words and the fun of cooking their own food. They then transition their lesson outdoors to the school garden where they replant the crops they just ate, water the soil and tend to the compost. Students are encouraged to visit their garden throughout the summer to tend to the crops and take home yummy fruits and vegetables. Because of their hands-on learning, they’ll know how to prepare healthy dishes from the garden bounty with their families.
Located in Montbello’s food desert, Marie L. Greenwood Academy’s Each One Teach One program aims to teach students to harvest local, nutritious produce in their own neighborhood and how to be stewards of the Earth by reconnecting them to nature and agriculture. These young student-chefs have quickly become engaged in reading, culinary arts, biology, botany, horticulture, environmental science, chemistry and geology all through a love of gardening!