The document discusses implementing a food justice curriculum in the 6th grade at Sidwell Friends School. It outlines activities already done around issues like hunger, including an OxFam Hunger Banquet and visit to Heifer Global Village. It proposes making food justice the 6th grade theme, supported by existing activities and relationships. Activities suggested include having students research hunger locally and globally, examine organizations addressing food access, and read The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind about sustainable agriculture. The curriculum aims to make service-learning experiences more meaningful through true community partnerships and reflecting on social justice issues.

1. Sowing Seeds
Food Justice in the
6th Grade Curriculum
Lesley Younge and Stewart Lentz
Sidwell Friends School

2. Queries for Today
1. How might middle school students learn about systemic roots of
global and local hunger?
2. How might global issue studies aid in academic skill development?
3. What changes whenservice-learning becomes an academic
priority?
4. How can teams collaborate to develop meaningful
community engagement programming?
5. What does exceptional community engagement programming rooted
in best practices actually look like?
Spoiler Alert: we have no answers, only these questions

3. History
- Strong commitment to community service in the middle school
- Service days, charity drives, Founder’s Day speakers, UNICEF, minimester
- Largely teacher driven and organized, some parent initiation, some student initiation
- Relationships with Martha’s table, A Wider Circle, Food & Friends, Hearst Elementary School
(DCPS), NIH Children’s Inn, St. Coletta’s, Washington Educational Tennis Foundation,
Rosemount
- 6th grade social studies shift
- world geography and cultures → global issues and sustainability
- Added OxFam Hunger Banquet in the fall of 2015
- Visit to Heifer Global Village at Shepherd’s Spring became an overnight
- UN human rights and sustainable development goals
- Summer 2016 grant to evaluate service programming PK-12
- Work to shift from traditional community service program to critical service-learning marked
by true community engagement influenced by “Traditional vs. Critical Service-Learning:
Engaging the Literature to Differentiate Two Models,” by Tania D. Mitchell
- 8 recommendations

4. Eight Critical Service-Learning Recommendations
1. Create reciprocal partnerships.
2. Embrace community leaders and partners as co-educators.
3. Set aside purposeful times to participate in the social justice work.
4. Collaborate with students and faculty at other schools.
5. Weave relevant service learning into the curricula of academic classes.
6. Build a reflective component into the service learning curriculum.
7. Examine the role that diversity (socio-economic, racial, privileged mindsets,
etc.) plays.
8. Develop a social justice/service-learning faculty education component.
“The critical approach re-imagines the roles of community members, students, and faculty in the service-learning
experience. The goal, ultimately, is to deconstruct systems of power so the need for service and the inequalities that
create and sustain them are dismantled.” ~ Tania Mitchell

5. Eight Critical Service-Learning Recommendations
1. Create reciprocal partnerships.
2. Embrace community leaders and partners as co-educators
3. Set aside purposeful times to participate in the social justice work.
4. Collaborate with students and faculty at other schools
5. Weave relevant service learning into the curricula of academic classes
6. Build a reflective component into the service learning curriculum.
7. Examine the role that diversity (socio-economic, racial, privileged
mindsets, etc.) plays
8. Develop a social justice/service learning faculty education component

6. Query
How do we leverage our current curriculum to create a
service-learning program that is authentically integrated
into students’ academic studies and grounded in real
relationships with community partners who educate us as
we serve with them?

7. Food Justice as the 6th Grade Theme!
- Supported by activities that we already do and relationships
that we already have
- A worldwide issue
- Accessible to 11 and 12 year olds
- A fundamentally complex issue with no answer- is there
anything more rigorous than trying to solve world hunger?
- Cusp of eligibility - they are just old enough to volunteer or
think about volunteering at many service providers in the
city

8. If there is enough for all,
why don’t all have enough?
● WHO IS HUNGRY IN WASHINGTON DC?
● WHY MIGHT THEY NOT HAVE ENOUGH NUTRITIOUS FOOD?
● WHAT TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONS HELP WITH FOOD JUSTICE IN OUR
COMMUNITY?
● HOW DO THEY RUN AND WHAT CAN THEY ACCOMPLISH?
● WHO IS HUNGRY AROUND THE WORLD?
● WHY MIGHT THEY NOT HAVE ENOUGH NUTRITIOUS FOOD TO EAT?
● HOW MIGHT OUR ACTIONS CAUSE HUNGER?
● HOW MIGHT OUR ACTIONS HELP EASE HUNGER?

9. Food is a Human Right
- The right to food is protected in Article 25 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and many other international
agreements.

10. Food is a Human Right

11. Refugees

12. Global Issue Summit
● Each student in each class
assigned a UN Sustainable
Development Goal.
● They wrote a “global issue
brief” 1 page research
paper.
● Held a global issue summit where the five students who worked on each
goal met and prepared a presentation for classmates on their issue and
what was being done about.

13. Hunger Banquet
- Between school resources and
OxFam resources it was easy
to plan!
- Essential element has been
speaker from OxFam
- Experiential
- Visual
- Impactful
- Preparation for Global Village

14. DC Central Kitchen Turkey Drive
● Drives are common - how do they become service-learning
and community engagement experiences?
● Speaker came to educate about DCCK mission and programming and to
ground the turkey drive in reality
○ School program - healthy lunches
○ Healthy Corners - food deserts
● How were our efforts connected to the big picture? WHO were we
partnered with?
● Many of our students are too young to volunteer there, but will soon be
able to on their own, with families, or through school.
● Connection between hunger and jobs - Why are people hungry?

15. Capital Area Food Bank Hunger Heat Map
● Mapping
Project
Launch
● Data
Analysis
● Non-fiction
Reading a
WP article
about its
creation
● Technology

16. Homeroom Initiatives

17. Heifer Global Village Overnight
Experiential Learning Site using Heifer
International’s curriculum.
Programs explore:
● Environmental Conservation
● Global Economics
● Hunger and Nutrition
● Multiculturalism
● Poverty Issues
● Social Equality and Justice
Programs last from 1 hour to 3 days.

18. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
by William Kamkwamba
● Sixth Grade read
● Related to study of renewable energy
○ Renewable energy research paper
○ Windmill building in science
● Features a complex look at a drought and famine in Malawi
○ Role of governments in feeding citizens
○ Agricultural economy challenges
○ Climate change burdens
○ Effect of agencies like World Bank
● This year a group of us received a grant to travel to Malawi to learn more about
sustainable development overall, agricultural economies with high drought and
famine risks, and those who are bearing the brunt of climate change.

19. Everybody Grows Partnership
● Long-term relationship building
● Learning from Community Leaders
○ Executive Director is an alum
● Opportunity to work with diverse community
members
● On and off campus opportunities
● Sustainable living
● Students gain new skills
● Health and nutrition
● Science Integration

20. Launch
Planting

21. And now SPROUTS!

22. Gardening In the Curriculum
Literature
Math
Art

23. So what’s next?

24. A Protocol for Examining
the Documentation of Student Thinking
Step 1: Introduction (5 minutes)
Step 2: Examining the evidence (20 minutes)
Each of the groups looks closely at their documentation (4 different sets of student reflections following
service-learning activities - 5 mins).
In group discussion, address in the following questions, with the facilitator taking notes (approx. 5
min/question = 15 min):
1) What strikes you in the students’ reflections on their service experience? (Can you cite
specific language in their answers?)
2) Where do you see evidence of deeper thinking about the experience? (Again, specifics?)
3) What questions emerge for you after reading the student responses?

25. A Protocol for Examining
the Documentation of Student Thinking
Step 3: Sharing our own thinking (15 minutes)
1) What strikes you in the students’ reflections on their service
experience? (Can you cite specific language in their answers?)
2) Where do you see evidence of deeper thinking about the experience?
(Again, specifics?)
3) What questions emerge for you after reading the student responses?

26. A Protocol for Examining
the Documentation of Student Thinking
Step 4: What have we learned and what directions might we now take? (15 minutes)
1. What have we learned, through this documentation of our students’ thinking,
about our students’ understanding of the 6th grade service experiences?
2. What would be different if we could not have “read their voices”?
3. What questions do our students still have? What are they grappling with?
4. What might deepen the experience and its impacts, both for them and for
our service partners?
5. Where might we go next?
6. What might be challenges to any shifts - in thinking or action?

27. A Protocol for Examining
the Documentation of Student Thinking
Step 5: Acknowledgements
Thank you for participating in the protocol – and special silent
thanks to the student participants for their voices on these
reflections!

28. Resources
https://www.wfp.org/students-and-teachers/teachers/blog/nine-infographics-will-help-you-teach-
hunger
Hunger Heat Map:
http://cafb.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=b4906ac11bf74cd781c5567124be9
364
http://www.bread.org/about-hunger
http://www.feedingamerica.org/
http://everybodygrows.org/
https://dccentralkitchen.org/
www.foodandfriends.org
https://www.oxfamamerica.org