Food

Nugget, biscuit, mashed potatoes.  Plus salad.

One thing I am really enjoying and appreciating about the Free School is the food.  Wait, what?  School food that is tasty?  Yes, it's really true.  Deirdre, the cook and kitchen manager, makes breakfast and lunch from scratch every day.  The food is so good that everyone, including teachers, chooses to eat it rather than bring lunch from home.  Everyone eats together in a family-style arrangement.  Teachers keep an eye on kids but they do more than just supervise - they socialize with kids and with each other. Deirdre encourages and cajoles kids to eat vegetables along with the things they most like and it works - every day I see kids eating spinach, carrots, corn, peppers, and other healthy stuff.

All by itself, this would be enough to improve the culture of the school - you can see the impact that a healthy diet without so much red dye 40 has on kids. But there is more to food at the Free School than just eating. Kids are also involved in gardening and cooking. Deirdre manages the garden and kids are frequently joining her in pulling weeds and harvesting. Deirdre also teaches baking and cooking lessons, sometimes organized in a formal class and sometimes spontaneously.

The picture above was taken after one such spontaneous cooking moment. Three middle-school boys were inspired by this YouTube video to create a lunch featuring handmade chicken nuggets, biscuits, and mashed potatoes. For the whole school. They did almost everything themselves. And it was delicious.