The only hope nutrition education has to compete with the rich and powerful food industry interests is to arm students with a cultural lens of original thought. If they cannot think for themselves, they will be led to the corporatists' unhealthy foods.
Incorporating democratic principles into the classroom requires students to have the capacity to focus, participate, and lead. Leadership is integral to the utilization of resources, whether physical or intellectual. Creating activities to prompt such interaction is challenging but worthwhile. Fortunately I have the ability to position students in situations where they have as much control as I can afford them. So, this philosophy has manifested in the cafeteria tastings at one site and the cooking clubs at the other schools.
Specifically trying to maximize my leadership intentions for the students I plan on beginning to elect student leaders to supervise the team of students in the preparation of the healthy food and the distribution. Such an action will serve to both make my leadership intentions for these young men more operationally based (they will be acting as leaders, instead of talking about being leaders), and create a criteria for judging/measuring their leadership capacity.
Specifically trying to maximize the diversity of the education and the hands-on nature of it, I will be trying to incorporate as much gardening indoors and outdoors as possible. The possibilities for such expansion can teach through outdoors exploration and tasting even. I have high hopes.
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