1st-3rd Grade Teacher, Feeding Futures Fellow
Montessori Academy for Peace
Mrs. Cordova has been teaching for almost 15 years. She has taught in various places around the world such as the Navajo Nation, Japan, and South Korea before coming home to her hometown and Montessori Academy for Peace teaching first, second, and third grade. Mrs. Cordova has been a Montessori educator for over eight years. She first became interested in Feeding Futures with Pilot Light when hearing coworkers excitedly talking about participating in the program, and she believes the Feeding Futures program ties in perfectly with the Montessori principles of “teaching the whole child.”
Furthermore, she is looking forward to continuing to empower children to make healthy food choices while connecting their understanding of food to culture both close to home and around the world. She believes food is a global connector that can bring all of us together to the same table and is excited to share that with her students during her fellowship.
Favorite Food Education Standard: FES #1: Food connects us to each other.
I cannot say enough how true this has been through my own experiences in life. No matter where I have been in the world or in life, sitting down together at the table to eat as been a great connector, even when we didn’t speak the same language!
A Favorite Food Memory or Recipe:
Growing up I loved to perch in the kitchen on a stool or a counter while my loved ones cooked. We would talk about life – sometimes the benign day-to-day things and sometimes the mashed-potatoes-solve-all-problems things. I loved listening to their stories about recipes passed down through generations or the special person in their life that taught them to cook or how it was “back in their day.” When I grew old enough to help, being together always made the work more fun, even doing the dishes, and I loved singing and chatting while we prepared food for us all – I swear it always made the food taste better at the end.
What I’m Most Excited About as a Feeding Futures Fellow:
I am so excited to watch my students build their own connections to food, health, their community, and the global community! They have already shared their own excitement for starting this program; we are ready to learn and grow together!
