The Pilot Light Food Education Standards have been developed, in collaboration with community and education stakeholders, to further the important mission of deploying and defining food education to schools throughout Chicago and beyond.
In alignment with the Standards, Pilot Light has developed a cohesive model for classroom food education, integrating food into traditional subjects like math, reading, history, and science. Pilot Light’s community of teachers builds on students’ knowledge and experiences of and with food through the lessons teachers are already teaching. Simultaneously, students are also learning about food and how it connects us to ourselves, our communities, and our world, while advocating for an equitable future.
Introduction to the Standards
It is important that students receive education about the cultivation and preparation of food and how to connect to food’s role in our culture, relationships, history, and environment. However, this information is often missing within school curricula. Through our approach to holistic food education, we hope to encourage students to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to inform healthy choices by building on the knowledge that students already have about their food. Schools are an ideal setting for the integration of food education into an academic setting, enriching the core curricular areas and further encouraging critical thinking in a manner both tangible and applicable to students’ daily lives. Beyond schools, families and communities can play a role in providing food education to young people and supporting classroom-based learning. These Standards provide a straightforward framework for all stakeholders to integrate this learning into young people’s lives.