Oct 19, 2006 3:39 PM
Before I changed careers this year to become a New York City public school teacher, I was working as a chef in a highly acclaimed four-star restaurant. I was also volunteering as a chef instructor for City Harvest, a food rescue organization dedicated to feeding the hungry in New York City. As a City Harvest volunteer, I taught cooking and nutrition to adults in an SRO in Harlem. Many in the class had substance abuse issues and a couple of them were overweight.
When I began teaching 8th-grade math in a Manhattan middle school in September, my principal proposed that I bring a part of my former world into my new one.
I was assigned an elective to teach as part of my program. My principal suggested that I set up a City Harvest program in the school. He had a feeling that the program would be popular with our students since they had actively raised money for a Hurricane Katrina relief fund and had a good sense of community service. Sure enough, when we started publicizing the elective, we received a huge e-mail response. The 48 slots in the program filled up immediately, and we had to turn away a dozen or so kids.
In the first week, I asked a City Harvest representative to present the program to the kids. She described how the organization began with just two people and an idea: What to do about all the food waste in New York City restaurants. She told the kids that one in five New Yorkers is suffering from hunger. City Harvest, she explained, collects excess food from restaurants for distribution to the hungry. Her presentation had a big impact on the students. One girl was so moved that she asked if she could make her own sandwiches at home and bring them to the shelter herself!
The kids’ task each week is to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the local homeless shelter.
I divided the kids into six groups of eight. Every week, each kid rotates through one of the eight stations — bread, jelly, peanut butter, “closer,” “wrapper,” “weigher,” receipts and “head chef,” who oversees the entire operation from set-up to clean-up. Each team chose their own “restaurant” name for their group, such as Junk Food Bistro and Jelly Fish. Each week, a different team is selected to deliver the sandwiches to the shelter.
We kicked off our City Harvest program with donated peanut butter, jelly and Wonder bread. The kids donned aprons, hats and gloves before glazing themselves in peanut butter and jelly. We projected that we would be able to make 80 sandwiches during this one class period. We ended up doing more than what we set out to accomplish with time to spare. Somehow in all the noisy, messy chaos, we made more than 100 sandwiches, cleaned up the classroom, and packed the sandwiches for delivery.
After school, we walked our first group of eight children to the local shelter, which was about five blocks away from the school. The kids insisted on lugging the 31 pounds of sandwiches all the way to the shelter.
We arrived at the shelter and unpacked the bags in the kitchen. I managed to squeeze in a math exercise. We dropped off 22 containers of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and each container held eight sandwiches. The kids did the calculation — 176 sandwiches! We hit double our target for the week.
The kids were happy to see that their visit brought smiles to the faces of the people in the shelter. They are learning an incredibly important life lesson: It feels good to do good.
CMitchell is the pseudonym for a second-year teacher. A version of this post first appeared on the UFT blog, edwize.org, where “New Teacher Diaries” is a regular feature. Newer teachers are invited to chronicle their experiences in the New York City schools on the blog. If you're interested in contributing, send an e-mail to blog@uft.org.