I teach a one-year, intensive urban agriculture, food & natural resources program to high school seniors at the U School in North Philadelphia. Our program’s mission is to engage young people with the many interrelated topics and opportunities that intersect with food systems, food security, climate justice, food production & processing using the lens of socio-political-economic pillars of sustainability and the UN Sustainability Goals.

The U School offers a competency-based model that requires young people to demonstrate their learning through tangible performance tasks, and attempts to be transparent with expectations by offering numerous opportunities for independent and self-directed learning. The U School Urban Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (AFNR) CTE program is a unique one-year program for high school seniors that combines traditional expectations of the CTE model within the specific context of urban Philadelphia and the U School model. The U School AFNR team hopes to engage and empower young people with challenging and scaffolded learning experiences – in the classroom, school-based ag and food “labs,” field trips, campus and neighborhood greening projects, internships, and other real-world learning opportunities towards deep and meaningful engagement in big issues and green collar career pathways.

Because almost the whole senior class is enrolled in the AFNR program, we are spending a lot of planning time considering how to offer a wide range of pathways from, through, and adjacent to the general topics of agriculture, food and natural resources.  Each student is required to complete a senior year portfolio that is determined in large part by school district & state requirements and (hopefully) in even larger part by student interest and partner support. Their portfolio will require both evidence of AFNR skills and task completion, and demonstration of abilities on required English 4 competencies. Some students will require particular certifications to complete their portfolio. Others will provide a transcript from CCP as evidence of English competency requirements. This unit is my first effort at a fully interdisciplinary unit in which students can add AFNR CTE skills, Social Studies and English 4 competencies, and some certification skill practice to their portfolio through the completion of lessons, assignments, projects, and activities.

Migration Stories

In ongoing efforts to find various entry points for students to connect with big issues, and to offer a range of research and engaging projects through which students can demonstrate learning, this unit will encourage students to connect what they know from their lived experiences eating and sharing food with family and friends to a global network of stories, tales, histories and reflections. Exploring and finding connections between culture and cuisine, migration and meals.

Most of my students were born in Philadelphia. These students are a mix of predominantly African American, and a smaller percentage of what the School District defines as Hispanic/Latino. Some of the latter are English language learners, and live in households where parents don’t speak, read or write, fluently in English. All have favorite foods, expectations for specific dishes during shared family meals, and some experience with foods from other cultures.

In this unit I will encourage students to explore quotidian and celebration meals – the acts of sharing food with family and friends – to a global network of stories, tales, histories, and reflections to ground us in personal relationships to the larger food systems. This unit can also set the stage for students to understand that they have multiple avenues and opportunities to build their overall AFNR portfolio while engaging with ideas via text, video, interviews; connecting their lived experiences and family stories with larger socio-political issues alongside practical learning and seasonal gardening and cooking tasks.

Before we enter into teaching and learning the science of agronomy, food safety, and the economics and logistics of food distribution I would like to inspire students to connect food to agriculture; agriculture to place; place to culture; to deepen the relevance of why I ask them to study soil, food growing techniques, sustainable agriculture practices, and food safety.

Agriculture is the heart of the world economy.  In 2022, 22.1 million full- and part-time jobs were related to the agricultural and food sectors—10.4 percent of total U.S. employment. (“Ag and Food Sectors and the Economy” 2024) “Worldwide Agriculture is the world’s largest industry. It employs more than one billion people and generates over $1.3 trillion dollars worth of food annually. Pasture and cropland occupy around 50 percent of the Earth’s habitable land and provide habitat and food for a multitude of species.” (“Impact of Sustainable Agriculture and Farming Practices”, n.d.)

Agricultural food production and processing practices can build healthy ecosystems, healthy people, and wealth. Agricultural food production and processing are too often exploitative, environmentally degrading, and unsustainable on all measures. The way we farm has a direct impact on our health. “Industrial farming practices pollute the environment and have led to global epidemics of obesity and diabetes.” (“Human Health”, 2023)

Our school has a food resource room to provide students, staff, and neighbors, fresh locally grown vegetables and fruits along with pantry staples. This is a project of our AFNR program. The work of ordering and organizing food sharing offers students chances to practice real-world learning in food systems work. The next need of this project is to offer culturally relevant recipes, guidance (workshops?) to support the recipients of our food boxes to have an easier time knowing what to do with some of the seasonal vegetables they may not recognize, and so may ignore or reject. In the context of backwards design; my goal is to enlist students to consider their deep personal and historical narratives and relationships with food to uncover how these narratives are interwoven with opportunities to impact their personal health, community wellness, through the choices we make as consumers, agriculture practitioners, civically engaged eaters, and future policy makers. I hope they tap this knowledge to create or transcribe recipes to go along with these food boxes. I am also, of course, designing around the specific skills and competencies (see appendix) that this unit will cover.

Seminar Gleanings

In this seminar – Children’s Literature and the Immigrant Experience – We started off our session with some readings and arguments that contextualized rules and policies around migration and immigration as tools for societies to control wealth and retain power hierarchies, often on the basis of race. We considered many aspects of how teaching and learning can be enriched by deep consideration of the journey each of our students is on in their lives, and the stories that they can be introduced to by their teachers that help them contextualize these journeys. As a class we took time each week to do a deep dive into the specific assigned readings, as well as the ways in which these readings could be integrated into classroom lessons, or for unit writing background. Our reading list was a range of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and story books that centered the narrative of young people who have (or are) navigating varied immigrant experiences, historic and contemporary. In addition to content curated for possible use in our classroom settings, we explored socio-political concepts, research and strategies for educators to consider immigrant students as cosmopolitan intellectuals. After reading an article co-authored by our seminar leader, Gerald Compano, which delved deeply into the ways educators can and should recognize, celebrate and center migration stories. From the many things I took from this article it was that “designing a literary curriculum is not a matter of matching certain texts with certain people. It is about employing a plurality of texts to individually and collectively fashion identities and investigate our shared realities.” (Campano and Ghiso 2011, 172). Knowing that each individual student has authentic and multiple intersecting identities and allowing them to connect to the many universal ideas and experiences that are found in literature, can be a powerful tool to forge shared experiences and make meaning in classroom conversations and school communities.

We spent time considering myriad ways to support multilingualism, and to celebrate home language and the nuances of when and how translations and home language are used in literature. We practiced some prompts and exercises to incorporate dramatic movement and acting to mobilize student voice, and what sort of learning can happen when communities are invited and supported to participate in the learning design and implementation. As a science teacher I felt welcomed into a community of educators with more experience considering how to select anchor texts, and utilize literary circles to engage students. Having seminar leaders who teach in the Graduate School of Education also meant that many of our seminar sessions included conversations on pedagogy and practice. Learning from seminar leaders and my fellow colleagues expanded the range of classroom strategies and activities I have to offer my students in the upcoming school year.

Food Stories

Exploring food stories has often led me to stories about land, place, migration, displacement, and history. Food stories are also stories of seeds, of farmers, of places, of plenty, and of famine.

In considering how I might encourage students to dig into their own family food stories, I remembered a story that I read and reread as a child and read and reread to my children as a parent. In the version of the tale Stone Soup that I first encountered; the residents of a village are frightened when several outsiders arrive. They hide away, initially unwilling to help the visitors to the town. Intrigued by the visitors’ offer to make a delicious stone soup, the townspeople are enticed to each leave their houses with something to add to the pot. By the end of the story the town square is filled with people sharing bowls of soup from a pot they have all contributed to. These small offerings from many people made a delicious soup with enough for all.

In the Eastern European version the villagers had barley, carrots, chicken (salt, pepper, herbs). A version with three Chinese monks entering a walled city brings tofu, mushrooms and ginger (garlic, pepper, herbs) to the add to the cooking vessel.  There is a tale called Cactus Soup in the town of San Miguel, another called Bone Button Broth which seems to be set in Poland, and a Slavic tale called Hatchet Soup. The ingredients shared reflected the location, culture and place where the story was set.  Some of these story books are illustrated with contemporary and diverse characters, others with animal cooks and guests, the majority feature villagers in stylized clothing depicting a particular culture in a particular era. All these feature improbable initial ingredients (stones, nails, bones) and begin a cascade of culturally specific local offerings to the shared pot. Just as the villagers in all versions of this story come together to create a nourishing soup by each contributing ingredients, I hope to have students explore how diverse traditions can blend to create something greater than the sum of its parts – into which we all need to contribute – which can be shared by all once complete.

While engaging with the themes of cooperation, community, and shared resources that are key to all versions of this folktale, students may unearth some connections to their cultural heritage that they had not considered, and hopefully will develop an appreciation for a wider range of cultural diversity and the transformative power of learning about, growing and sharing food, as well as the familiar and less familiar foods that we each bring from our heritage and family circumstances to add to the pot. And like the tricksters who got the villagers to add to the pot, perhaps students will practice some skills and learn some content along the way.

All of us share a fundamental connection. We get hungry each day and want to eat.  What we eat (or don’t) is informed by a combination of our economic situation, our geographical situation, our current living situation, our history, our talents and our experience.

What might be called “ethnic restaurants or ethnic food trucks” by long-time residents of a city – may offer newer arrivals a taste of home, and entrepreneurial opportunities.  Food preferences and foods associated with a culture or a heritage are generally based on agricultural practices and what could grow or be raised or caught in a particular place.   “A critical feature of human migration the world over is the preservation of traditional dietary preferences across space and the dislocation of geography.” (Carney, Osmanoff 2009, 138)

Traditional growing and cooking techniques morph as climate and location shift, but something fundamental and important remains – even if the origins are murky and the dishes served at gatherings are no longer fully “authentic.” “Food, it turns out, is an excellent locus for the study of group dynamics – how different populations exclude, include, reject, accept and otherwise influence each other.  In the case of Africans and African Americans, the study of foodways enlarges respect for the way a people, so egregiously oppressed, have miraculously managed to hold on to certain traditions from the West African origins yet have adapted and evolved various customs…” (Bower 2009, xii)

In today’s globalized world, the movement of people across borders has shaped societies in many ways -and the food and agriculture systems and land use of many countries as a result. Ever fewer people grow our food. Too many farmers’ livelihoods are at the whims of geopolitical decisions made at commodities trading desks Black and Brown farmers have been pushed off the land, and yet. “Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices have roots in African wisdom….[but]  discrimination and violence against African-American farmers has led to their decline from 14 percent of all growers in 1920 to less than 2 percent today, with a corresponding loss of over 14 million acres of land.” (Penniman, n.d.)

Many people no longer know how to cook – and even more don’t fully understand the health implications of eating the ultrahigh processed food that seem to be the main calories our students fill themselves with. Too many humans are both overweight and undernourished. “Whereas fat historically served the needs of the high physical activity that went with slave and agrarian society, that high fat content, along with high salt content, has become an impediment to a healthy and longer life span.” (Bower 2009, 55)

Many of these issues can be connected to forced migration, racialized public policies, community structures and resources, and now climate catastrophe.   All of these topics, and their interconnections, may be useful pathways into capturing the imagination.  Helping students find ways to connect their lived experiences with their histories, present-day issues that require social change and civic engagement are an essential part of making this program successful.

Relevant History 

The primary work in this unit is geared for students to explore their personal and family cultural identities and to try to trace foodways back through family migration histories. To this end I read and reviewed a range of books, articles and reference materials, to provide sources and resources.

Few of us living on the land that was once called Lenapehoking are descended from those indigenous tribes that farmed, fished and lived on and “off” the land in what is now Philadelphia. The cultural makeup of my student body is primarily, though not exclusively, African American and Puerto Rican. These basic categorizations represent many migration stories, over many generations.

Many of the independent readings and research I did to prepare to write this unit included sources that could provide background information and analysis of both the history and impact African American and Puerto Rican immigration to the USA, Philadelphia in particular, along with the legacy contributions these varied and disparate cultures to our American agriculture and culinary traditions. I searched for reading that linked the Atlantic Slave trade, and the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the industrial north, and the immigration patterns and influence of Puerto Rican communities who moved to Philadelphia on not only the diaspora of people, but on dispersal of the seeds, cooking traditions, and foodways. The contributions of both peoples on the labor to grow, process, distribute and cook all this food must also be considered. Migrant workers, and unskilled labor, are the backbone of our food system. An estimated 2.4 million farmworkers work on farms and ranches in the United States (2017 Census of Agriculture). The large majority of farmworkers are immigrants, and approximately 36% lack authorized work status under current U.S. laws. (“Who We Serve – Farmworker Justice”, n.d.)

I read widely about the botanical legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. “Until the second decade of the 19th century, Africans crossed the Atlantic in greater numbers than Europeans. They brought critical skills and knowledge….slaves revitalized familiar foodways that were lost along with their freedom. On many different levels the transatlantic slave trade represents one of the most important migrations in human history.” Food gardens “botanical gardens of the dispossessed” became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies (Carney and Osmanoff 2009, #). I found several collections of African Diaspora Seeds, including one from a Philadelphia company, featuring seeds grown by mid-Atlantic farmers. This seed company, True Love Seeds, provides background information about the source of the seeds, the preservation pathway, culinary uses and current farmers who grew the seeds in the packets they provide. There are a number of episodes on the True Love Seeds owner’s “Seeds and their Stories” podcast in which migrants now living and working in our region to keep alive the contributions of their people and the valuable plants they have been stewarding, share their stories.

The neighborhoods surrounding our school have several long standing Puerto Rican community organizations in which culture is celebrated through food gardening and food sharing, The Norris Square Neighborhood Project has six gardens which each represent and embody the diversity of Puerto Rican and West African diasporas in Philadelphia through the crops in the garden and the layout and design. Norris Square Project’s Villa Africana Colobó was created in 2006 and explores the West African diaspora inherent in Puerto Rican culture and ancestry. In the center of the garden are three African huts, which are painted both inside and out with patterns and markings evoking African tribes. The garden also features an outdoor kitchen that is used for cooking demonstrations and get-togethers. Villa Africána Colobó includes a storytelling room with brightly colored walls. Artifacts, crafts, and books from Africa and Puerto Rico tell the stories of traditions and cultural practices connected to the African heritage on the island. (“Our Gardens – Norris Square Neighborhood Project”, n.d.). Through volunteering in the community, I have met several of the current gardeners, and youth educators in this project, who have invited our class to visit.

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns, we risk immense misunderstanding when we forget that everyone’s life and identities are composed of many overlapping stories.  She says “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” (“The Danger of a Single Story”, n.d.)  Keeping that in mind, students will be invited to seek out many stories, and to consider their own story from multiple perspectives. They may choose a favorite food that has nothing to do with their culture or ancestry. What matters is that they are finding a connection through an interest. And, as importantly they will be learning from the stories of their classmates, teachers and community partners, about the commonalities within our differences.

Since there are a number of intersecting goals, and a wide range of competencies students can demonstrate while completing these lessons, there are a variety of teaching strategies to be employed.

The main strategy is inquiry.  Students will be asking questions, be asked questions, and will answer their own and my questions in various ways.   The unit is organized sequentially, and most students will participate step-by-step.   Students with less than stellar attendance will be able to jump into class-based and lab activities when they are in school, and will be able to do the independent research and minimum requirements, but will miss the opportunities to do many of the interdisciplinary and hands-on explorations.

This unit will ask students to trace something about their heritage through a dish in a celebration meal. This might be the journey of an ancestor or contemporary family member; a plant part such as its seeds (or tuber) across borders, or a recipe remembered and reproduced. These recipes will reveal connections, overlapping ingredients, and a range of stories – personal, historical, sociological and practical.   Where are the places where these ingredients originate? What can we learn through the stories of the seeds and how they traveled to new lands, across borders, and alongside humans and their stories. “Food is a touchstone, a place of familiarity when we are lost or feel out of place” (Williams-Forson 2022, 72). Students might explore cultural identity, agricultural innovation, and culinary diversity while contemplating these journeys. This curriculum aims to get at the deep-rooted connections between migration, agriculture, and gastronomy, offering students a unique lens through which to view the world. What “stone soup” might they make? What might they add to a “group soup.”

The unit will begin with students being served a cup of seasonal homemade vegetable soup.

While students are sipping, I will do a read aloud of a version of Stone Soup which I first encountered.  This is an illustrated story book, designed for young readers, and can be read in less than 10 minutes.   Then we will break into small groups, and students will select from one of the several other Stone Soup/Stone soup-esque folktales.   From Eastern European soldiers visiting a wary village, to Chinese monks visiting a walled city to make soup from stones which end up hearty and flavorful through the contributions of the initially nervous inhabitants. Other kindred tales exist from Russia using nails or in Polish Jews using buttons and local ingredients- Bone Button Borscht  to Mexico with cactus spines and very different local ingredients for a Cactus Spine Soup.   Students will then be invited to take responsibility to make a version of the stone soup described in the story they read using seasonal vegetables harvested from our school garden, and CSA boxes we get weekly.   This activity will take place over the course of a week, during scheduled food lab time.  This part of the assignment offers a real-world reason to learn and practice required knife skills, introduce required food safety and food handling certifications, and give these AFNR CTE students an opportunity to identify and use seasonal vegetables in a low stakes, hard to fail vegetable soup.    Following cooking and sharing food, students will be asked to reflect on the choices they made, the challenges and adventure of cooking without a recipe and their emerging understanding of what using seasonal and local foods mean.   Why is it seasonal?   Is winter squash grown in the winter?  Well, then, why is it called winter squash?  What processed or  preserved foods did we use (garlic, herbs, spices, dried tomatoes).

Students will then be given a recipe writing template, and will each complete a stone soup recipe based on the version of the story they read and hopefully prepared.   Recipe writing has a specific structure, and this short introductory lesson will both set the stage for digging deeper into cultural foodways, but also provides an opportunity to practice a “tool of the trade.”

The following week students will be assigned to read the introduction to The Cooking Gene, a memoir of sorts by chef/author Michael Twitty. Twitty curates and writes Afroculinaria, the first blog devoted to African American historic foodways and their legacies.  He writes,” The Old South is where I cook.  The Old South is a place where food tells me where I am.  The Old South is a place where food tells me who I am.” (Twitty 201, xii-xiii)

Students will also read a very short chapter from the novel “The Fire on High” by Elizabeth Acevado.  Acevedo sets her tale in a Philadelphia neighborhood just next to our school. This fictional high school senior, Emoni Santiago, uses her skills in the kitchen to convey her culture, and find her place in the world, while navigating the pressures of senior year and family responsibilities.

Next they will be assigned a guide (guided notes) which invites them to begin to act as a chronicler of their own family table.  First, they will describe in detail a celebration meal (Thanksgiving, Eid, their birthday) with all the plates on the table or sideboard or picnic blanket.  Then they will select a dish.  They will list all the ingredients in the dish.  They will be asked to create a simple supply chain chart for each ingredient in this one dish.  They will try to detail all the hands they imagine or know touched the food between the farm and the table. A recipe for this dish will be transcribed, copied, or found on the internet. Students will likely get stuck as they attempt to trace back ingredients to sources- from which emerges a central lesson. The global food supply is a complex network of growers, importers, shippers, processors, brokers, wholesalers, and retailers. Finding out where food comes from can be challenging and leads to the next part of the unit.

They will be given an assignment to trace the food supply chain of a locally produced mozzarella cheese (see Unit Guide for link to assignment) which will illuminate that even a three ingredient product, made with milk from the cheesemakers own cows,  has a complicated pathway from production to table.

The next lessons will provide context and an overview of the supply chain,  to prepare students for doing their own research into the winding path from seed to plant to product to favorite food. This path includes many people, doing many jobs. The path includes many opportunities to be sustainable, or to pollute the planet. This path includes many stories, and choosing which ones to focus on, and which research and presentation tools are best to tell their story is the next step in this unit. One set of stories all students will explore are a few “stories of seeds.” Students will listen (on their own) to a choice of two interviews from the podcast “Seeds and their Stories” from the True Love Seeds Team. One interview is with the founder/director of the Afro-Puerto Rican gardens that are just blocks from our school. The other is an interview with a young woman who started her own seed company, Sistah Seeds, focused on seeds from the African Diaspora. . We grow several crops in our school garden from Sistah Seeds. Students can learn first-hand about Amirah’s journey from an intern at True Love to a business owner, seed steward, and successful agriculturalist.   These conversations/lessons will explore seeds not just as agricultural entities but as connectors between past and present, tradition and innovation.

These conversations/lessons will explore seeds not just as agricultural entities but as connectors between past and present, tradition and innovation. Through stories, workshops, and cooking, students will learn to see seeds/recipes as repositories of culture, holding information about migrations,  and human ingenuity..

We will explore together strategies and ideas about how each of them will dig deeper into the story of the ingredients or journey or family history that their dish represents.  They will select an assignment from a choice board and complete some structured research.  Some students might complete family interviews, crafting questions, and collecting recipes.  Others will connect with urban farmers or food business owners.   They will determine what resources might be useful to help them learn about how the traditions they are interested in originated.   They might start with people with whom they share traditions, or who are importing or selling these foods. Who is growing key ingredients here in Philadelphia (if applicable)?    Students will be provided a few initial resources and guided specifically towards curated content depending on their particular project.  They will be required to use at least two “academic” sources (Google Scholar, Gale) and will guided to cite family interviews, seed catalogs, conversations with urban farmers, recipe head notes, selected folktales, children’s literature, non-fiction accounts, recipes, alongside some primary research to create a presentation about what they learned.   Their research and literature/source review will support them to complete an assignment from this choice board.

Other activities that will be happening in our AFNR classrooms alongside and adjacent to our unit study:

• Hands-on workshops on seed saving, sign making, plant propagation
• Bi-Weekly Culinary workshops –  focusing on student generated seasonal recipes, and using CSA boxes and garden harvests to make our own Stone Soup Recipes.
• Field trips to botanical gardens, farms, and “ethnic” restaurants to provide a hands-on understanding of crop diversity and culinary heritage.
• Multiple trips to local food stores to explore, identify food categories, labeling and pricing strategies and what is stocked where.
• One Class Visit (with spending money for each student) to explore the Food Trucks at Temple University

“Ag and Food Sectors and the Economy.” 2024. USDA ERS. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/ag-and-food-sectors-and-the-economy/.

Bower, Anne, ed. 2009. African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture. N.p.: University of Illinois Press.

Campano, Gerald, and Maria P. Ghiso. 2011. “Immigrant Students as Cosmopolitan Intellectuals.” In Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature, edited by Shelby Wolf. N.p.: Taylor & Francis.

Carney, Judith, Judith Carney, and Richard Osmanoff. 2009. In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. N.p.: University of California Press.

“The Danger of a Single Story.” n.d. Facing History. Accessed June 1, 2024. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/danger-single-story.

“Human Health.” 2023. Rodale Institute. https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-priorities/human-health/.

“Impact of Sustainable Agriculture and Farming Practices.” n.d. World Wildlife Fund. Accessed June 18, 2024. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-agriculture.

“Our Gardens – Norris Square Neighborhood Project.” n.d. Norris Square Neighborhood Project. Accessed June 05, 2024. https://myneighborhoodproject.org/gardens/our-gardens/.

Penniman, Leah. n.d. “Farming While Black – SOUL FIRE FARM.” Soul Fire Farm. Accessed June 18, 2024. https://www.soulfirefarm.org/media/farming-while-black/.

Twitty, Michael. 2017. The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. N.p.: HarperCollins.

“Who We Serve – Farmworker Justice.” n.d. Farmworker Justice. Accessed May 10, 2024. https://www.farmworkerjustice.org/about-farmworker-justice/who-we-serve/.

Williams-Forson, Psyche A. 2022. Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America. N.p.: University of North Carolina Press.

Bibliography

Berlin, Ira. The Making of African American: The Four Great Migrations. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.

Bower, Anne. African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture. Urbana: University Of Illinois Press, 2009.

Brown, Marcia. Stone Soup. Simon and Schuster, 2011.

Carney, Judith Ann, and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff. In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. Berkeley Calif.: University of California Press, 2011.

City of Philadelphia. “Growing from the Root: Philadelphia’s Urban Agriculture Plan Documents | Philadelphia Parks & Recreation,” September 8, 2023. https://www.phila.gov/documents/philadelphias-urban-agriculture-plan/.

Davis, Aubrey. Bone Button Borscht. Kids Can Press, 1996.

Forest, Heather, and Susan Gaber. Stone Soup. Paw Prints, 2009.

Harris, Jessica B. High on the Hog : A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. New York: St Martins Press, 2013.

Imani, Blair, and Rachelle Baker. Making Our Way Home : The Great Migration and the Black American Dream. New York: Ten Speed Press, 2020.

Kimmel, Eric A, and Phil Huling. Cactus Soup. Las Vegas, Nv: Two Lions, 2011.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013.

McGovern, Ann. Stone Soup. Perfection Learning, 1979.

Muth, Jon J. Stone Soup. ; Book and CD. Scholastic, Incorporated, 2011.

S Beth Atkin. Voices from the Fields : Children of Migrant Farmworkers Tell Their Stories. New York: Scholastic, 2001.

Vecchione, Patrice, and Alyssa Raymond. Ink Knows No Borders : Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2019.

Williams-Forson, Psyche A. Eating While Black. UNC Press Books, 2022.

www.youtube.com. “Farming While Black | Leah Penniman | TEDxBoston.” Accessed December 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QYDXtMiV80.

Standards

• 3.5 Reading Informational Text: Reading for Science and Technical Subjects
• 3.6 Writing: Writing in Science and Technical Subjects
• 8.5 Reading Informational Text: Reading in History and Social Studies
• 8.6 Writing: Writing in History and Social Studies 
• 4.3 Natural Resources
• 4.4 Agriculture and Society
• 4.5 Humans and the Environment
• 7.1 Basic Geography Literacy
• 13.1 Career Awareness and Preparation

PA English Language Development Standards:

• Standard 5: Communication in Social Studies

Education for Sustainability Standards:

• High School Human Sustainability
• A. Cultural Preservation & Transformation,
• C. The Dynamics of Systems & Change,
• E. Healthy Commons,
• H. Multiple Perspectives,
• I. Strong Sense of Place

Other Resources for Teachers & Students:

Herman’s Power of Food Stories Unit Plan   – with lessons, grading rubrics & worksheets

Michael Twitty – Afroculinaria

Food Activists and Street Kitchens: Cooking Revolutions in the Popular Pot.

Culinary Activism is Togetherness | meaningfulfoodblog

Cooking Stirs the Pot for Social Change – YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

The Activists Working to Remake the Food System – The New York Times

Puerto Rican Migration Stories

The Immigrant Cookbook: Recipes that Make America Great Hardcover – Illustrated, July 1, 2018  by Leyla Moushabeck (Author)

With the Fire On High – Elizabeth Acevado

Migration Meals: How African American Food Transformed the Taste of America

Soul food is diverse, rooted in survival and cultural building in its past, expansive in its future. It is, moreover, foundational to America’s claim to be a place of diversity and inclusivity, a claim unfulfilled, yet dutifully influenced by the contributions of Black America.

Do For Self: A Legacy Of Food And Resilience – Sapelo Square

​​Reflecting on the legacy of Edna Lewis and the NOI, it is apparent that Black people have moved too far away from food production. We have transitioned from the people driving the food system to those benefiting from it the least. We once grew, processed, and prepared the food that nourished our communities. However, we are no longer benefiting economically from this industry and, in turn, our food-related health issues like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, are increasing. In my city of Durham, N.C., Black folks don’t own or manage many farms. In fact, we account for a small percentage of people who shop at farmers’ markets. I would be remiss to ignore the trauma of 400 years of forced agricultural work and the continued dispossession of land that intentionally dismantled Black farms, thus exempting Black communities from food and economic advancement and sustainability.

Did An Enslaved Chef Bring Macaroni And Cheese To America? The Truth Behind Everyone’s Favorite Side Dish | Essence

‘“It’s a question of culinary identity,” says Moyer-Nocci. “We use food to demarcate ‘our group’ and signify membership. Foods within our culinary identity make us feel like we belong to something meaningful that is larger than ourselves. It’s our piece of eternity.” Karima Moyer-Nocchi

This decadent pasta dish can be traced back to ancient Italy, but to Black families across the diaspora, macaroni and cheese is ours. We can thank James Hemings, a man enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, for bringing the accompaniment to American tables.”

A Brief History of America’s Appetite for Macaroni and Cheese | Smithsonian

Who Invented Mac and Cheese? This American Favorite Has Ancient Roman Roots

​​ More often, it arises when authoritative hands have invested their expertise in a dish and positioned it within the folds of a tradition; as regards macaroni and cheese, that prerogative reverberates predominantly from the collective wisdom and generational experience of Black women in the United States

This reputation allowed it to be passed on with pride into the Soul Food canon, a genre that celebrates the foods that have sustained Black communities throughout American history and created a culinary identity from select dishes that bound a people through preparation rituals, food stories, festivities, and good eats, as it was in Ancient Rome, so too it is today. Foodways are the celebration of who we are, who we were, and who we would like to see ourselves as being.