The Consortium and The Hub Farm held a workshop for elementary Dual Language Instructors in Durham Public Schools in September 2024. The teacher participants spent the day at the outdoor learning farm. Speakers included Cindy Granados Evans, a registered dietician, and Maria Pacheco, owner of Cilantro Artisan Foods.
Cindy Granados Evans focused on the nutritional benefits of many Latin American fruits and vegetables. She provided classroom-ready activities for participants. Cindy’s materials can be accessed here.
Each participant received a copy of the bilingual (Spanish and English) book, Salsa, a cooking poem by Jorge Argueta. Teachers were provided with ideas for incorporating the text into the classroom and were given time to work together to expand upon those ideas. The suggestions for using the Salsa text in alignment with North Carolina Standards can be accessed here.
A classroom set of the text, Salsa, can be borrowed via our Lending Library.
Maria Pacheco, owner of Cilantro Artisan Foods, led a demonstration of traditional salsa-making. Maria shared her knowledge of the ingredients and preparation methods for making a salsa. Many of the ingredients used in making salsa are grown at the Hub Farm.
Rae Cohn, co-creator of the workshop and Hub Farm staff member explains why the workshop was offered at the Hub Farm, “Food is such a critical form of cultural community and survival, so by orienting this workshop around a recipe and Mexican cultural staple, salsa, we hoped to build an experience that was engaging and uplifting to students while still aligning with North Carolina standards and providing opportunities for experiential and outdoor learning…By offering this workshop at the Hub Farm, the outdoor education center for Durham Public Schools, teachers were able to engage with the ingredients in the garden and make salsa together in an experience that we hope they will bring to their students.”
For more information about these resources, please contact: Skylar Zee, outreach coordinator, at zee@email.unc.edu.
Photos by Rhiannon See.
This workshop was supported in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI National Resource Centers program. The content of this workshop does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
