It’s impossible to talk about education reform in our country without talking about New Orleans. What have they done in the past ten years to become so well-known?
Although the United States faces many political and social problems, one of our most prominent domestic issues occurs in schools and neighborhoods every day. Childhood obesity caused by malnutrition plagues many urban areas and grows into a lifelong problem for city adults. In areas such as New Orleans, Louisiana, there are thousands of families who fight hard each day to keep food on the table for their children. Although food stamps or SNAP benefits provide some relief when parents struggle with low income, families still often lack enough money to make healthy food choices for their children. Fruits and vegetables are too expensive, so parents are forced to buy more starchy, sugary foods to sustain their families. Poor diets like these can cause serious health problems, including obesity, for children and teens.
Certain schools in the country provide lunch for free or at a reduced cost to students whose parents cannot afford food for them at home. In fact, at schools where more than forty percent of students qualify for free lunch, every student receives free lunch. But many schools of this kind cannot afford healthy food either, and students receive the same low-quality food they would at home. Schools like these likely struggle not just with managing a culinary budget, but with providing students with adequate academic opportunities, too. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, few schools in the New Orleans area produced successful students; in fact, it was impressive just to pass. Selective public schools and private schools graduated most students, but fewer than fifty percent of open-enrollment students received a high school diploma.
This mix of academic failure, impoverished family environments, and an epidemic of malnutrition was toxic for young people in New Orleans before 2005. There was no escape, and a cycle of poverty continued to burden the people of southern Louisiana. Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept through the city. Though it tore through many buildings, caused physical harm to people and structures, and closed schools and businesses for months at a time, the storm was almost a blessing in disguise for New Orleans schools.
In a recent TED Talk, Jay Altman described the story of rebuilding a “system of schools” in New Orleans. Teachers and administrators returned to the city as it recovered from the hurricane and converted older failing schools into charter schools, which were more autonomous than traditional schools. They functioned independently of public school standards, so teachers were able to create communities to best fit the particular students at their school. Parents were more involved with their children’s academics, and they were able to choose which school their children would attend. College preparation for students started in kindergarten, which helped kids to believe from a young age that they had the ability and the opportunity to attend college. Though waitlists for these schools eventually become long and not every child was able to attend, they experienced success, building academically achieving and socially sustainable school communities.
Due to the establishment of charter schools in New Orleans, the number of students attending failing schools in the city fell from 62% in 2005 to only 7% in 2015. The city experienced an academic revolution. Firstline Schools, the resulting alliance of K-8 charter schools in New Orleans, is praised as one of the best charter school systems in the country and is now a model for other suffering districts.
One of the elements that makes Firstline Schools so successful is their commitment to the health of their students. After the hurricane, teachers at Samuel J. Green Charter School tore up a square of concrete behind the school building and repurposed the area into a garden. Other charter schools followed suit, and Firstline Schools opened Edible Schoolyard Programs at several of their charter schools.
The Edible Schoolyard Project was established in Berkeley, California as a way to teach students of an urban area about healthy eating, environmentally sustainable gardening and food choices, and community gardening programs. As was the case in New Orleans, many children at schools in Berkeley did not receive healthy meals, if any meals at all, in their own homes. They didn’t know how to make healthy food choices because their families did not have the financial means to purchase healthy food. Junk food like sugary cereals and chips, soda and pizza, and fat-rich fast food were the norm for home meals. This program used nutrition professionals and in-school kitchens and gardens to teach kids what to look for in healthy food, why they need vitamins and minerals, how to grow their own healthy food at home, and all about the science behind food preparation and agriculture.
School, all of a sudden, wasn’t just a place where impoverished students could receive free and reduced lunch, but a place where they learned to take control of their own health. They enjoyed the health benefits of fresh air and time to move around outside, as well as healthy school lunches they cooked themselves. One school in New Orleans even used milk from cartons that students didn’t drink at lunch and made it into yogurt they could take home to their families.
Education as an agent for social change is an American ideal. It is a tool educators and administrators around the country have harnessed to create a lifelong impact for their children. Education is not just facts and methods, but a way to empower individuals who are passionate about their communities, aware of their own health, and able to think critically about real-world issues. Using a hands-on method for teaching kids is a trend that is starting with gardens and kitchens but that will spread to all other areas of academics. Although New Orleans schools and other charter schools have a long way to go to become perfect schools, their commitment to their students is a model schools around the country should follow.
See more about Edible Schoolyard New Orleans here.
Read this blog post about a similar program at The Waldorf School in Cape Cod, MA.
Wow!! What an impressive turn around. If only all schools could make switches like this.