ADL STEAM teacher, Toni Zimmerman, will be joining the 5th Annual Pilot Light Food Education Fellowship! The Food Education Fellowship is a year-long professional development cohort designed to promote Food Education leadership in the Pilot Light model of integrated Food Education. This means that Zimmerman, alongside 24 other educators from schools across the country, will be weaving food topics into their classroom topics on a regular basis.
The Food Education Fellowship supports teacher growth and builds capacity through educator professional development sessions, weekly Food Education classroom instruction, teacher peer learning and coaching, and support in planning student-led food advocacy projects in collaboration with community partners. If you’re interested in learning more about Food Education, please visit www.pilotlightchefs.org.
Current 7th and 8th grade students are doing a coding project where they create a presentation to share about a food item they choose to learn more about. They will focus the research on one of the following topics:
- History/ cultural connections
- Environment/Nature
- Health/Nutrition
- Media/advertising
The next project will be making automatons themed around celebrations and highlighting that food connects us. Another project in the works is having students become entrepreneurs and start a snack company. They will plant microgreens and herbs to be used in the snack. Use science, technology, and math to manage the growing process. As they develop their snacks they will test it for taste, determine its nutrients, and collect data along the way. Finally, they will use a robot to deliver the snack to a customer in a different part of the school.
The fellowship also includes an opportunity for a chef demo, a school-wide food leadership project, and a community outreach component. The STEAM class would appreciate any members of the school community reaching out to support this. This could include helping with supplies to curate the STEAM Lab kitchen space, through donations of equipment or food or connecting over ideas or supports.