9th-12th Grade Transition, Special Education, English Language Arts, and Math Teacher in Northampton, MA
After working with incarcerated students for two decades, I now teach at a tiny special education school in Northampton, MA with students who have had a difficult time in their public schools. The students in our school understand marginalization, and many live the effects of food apartheid. They have recently been transforming a space next to our school into a garden, and they want to learn more about growing food, nutrition, and cooking.
In my free time, I love to read and volunteer at a number of ecological projects. I love making care packages for my friends and doing weekend art projects. I live with my girlfriend and our dog and cat, who might as well be a dog. It’s fun every day to watch their antics. One of my stand-out quirks is that I don’t have a cell phone. I may be the last inhabitant of the United States without one. I also have a kind of amazing collection of plastic toys and small figurines, including an infant eating a hot dog.
As a result of student and staff efforts to transform our school’s food resource usage from largely disposable products to entirely reusable products and our ongoing work toward sustainability, our school was one of only 44 schools across the country awarded a 2024 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon School Designation.
A favorite Food Education memory:
One of my favorite results of our food education classes has been the student leadership that’s developed. Students have requested to learn about specific dishes or food traditions, and students and teachers have stepped up to teach each other how to make their favorite dishes. This past week, a student brought in three trout that she had caught herself and taught other students how to fillet and prepare the fish. Then the class made Taiwanese fish tempura with the trout. It was absolutely amazing to watch how attentive and excited the students were in this class. And it’s really all because of Pilot Light.
I think they’re all valuable and structure classes in helpful ways, but for our school FES 1 has been most moving. The food lessons and cooking classes in our school has brought students and staff together in an amazing way. Food education in our school has been one of our biggest sources of community as a school.
How Pilot Light changed my teaching:
I am currently participating in a professional development course about Taiwan, and for our summer session, students and I are cooking all Taiwanese dishes. We are calling our summer “Taiwan summer.” So far we have made Taiwanese fish tempura, crullers, noodle cakes, three dipping sauces, scallion pancakes, among others.
“[The Fellowship] was one of the best professional development series I’ve ever experienced. Every training was packed with content and culturally celebratory. The organization effectively works against perpetuating racist power dynamics within the food system and consistently centralizes traditionally marginalized communities to shift power toward them. The lessons tie into all subjects, and students absolutely love learning about food.”
–Amy Stamm
