Cooked On Education

On his blog, Jim Moulton recently had a three-part posting about emotional engagement in education.

Here is what he says in part three:

“A young person who contributes to his or her community is less likely to behave in a way that hurts that community.”

This was the comment that I left:

This really hit home with me when I read this. I teach Culinary Arts in a juvenile prison in Maine and every day I work with students who have “hurt” their community in one way or another. Jim, you have inspired me. West Nile virus may not be an issue here in Maine, but hunger certainly is. We make bread in class almost every day. Why couldn’t we make bread for a local food pantry? We could provide fresh bread once or twice a week. There are several aspects that could be included in the project, including calculating the financial cost of making the bread and making a written proposal to the administration. A project like this could help my students make a positive impact in the community, something many of them have never done.

I am currently planning and trying to figure out how to make this work. One of the first things I did was to run the idea by my principal. After listening to what I wanted to do, she told me that the chaplain at our facility is looking into taking a couple of students to work at a local food pantry a couple of times a month (coincidence!?). Suffice to say, things are moving rather quickly. I spoke with the chaplain, who talked to the people who run the food pantry. We are currently trying to figure out how to get the raw ingredients donated. Oh, and they typically serve around 100 to 125 people every week. They want to be able to give a loaf to every one who comes in. That’s a lot of bread!

Tags: Bread, Jim Moulton, Project Based Learning