Hello! Welcome to the official blog for Oakland International High School's Community Garden and Wellness Program! My name is Liza Jade Richheimer. I am one of the founding teachers at OIHS. This year thanks to a generous family foundation, I am lucky enough to be the coordinator of the Community Garden and Wellness Program.
My goals for the program are: to build and grow on-site gardens with students through science classes and after-school programs, to run after-school bike club twice a week, to teach a cooking class and a winter yoga class, to support Oakland Unified School District's mission of improving their cafeteria food, and to create a culture of environmental stewardship at our school.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A long overdue update! Part I

Hello All, while we don't really experience "winter" here in Oakland, I still took a little time to hibernate and work on programing and planning. I'm happy to finally be updating the blog and sharing in the exciting work we have been doing!

The Green Team has been very busy! The Green Team decided that it was important for all the garbage and recycling bins to be well labeled, so thanks to the publishing class, we have beautiful signs for our garbage and recycling! The Green Team spent close to four hours labeling every can we have in the school! Then the Green Team went around to each Advisory class and gave a power point presentation about where our garbage goes, how much we waste and the importance of reducing the amount of garbage we produce.


Above left: Nathanel reinforcing a point on a slide. Above right: Sabas, Karen, Chandra and Miguel
teaching a class.









Green team members labeling garbage cans.


Left: Brisa, Tenzin and Fatima showing where the garbage goes.

We have started cooking class! Thanks to the generous support of the Berkeley High School BBQ Club and the Center for Ecoliteracy we have been able to buy cooking equipment to have a moveable kitchen and food for cooking classes. For our first class, we made fresh fava bean soup and hummus. The next class we made Dal and samosas and last week we made potato fritters and a green salad with beets and warm goat cheese. The greens and beets were from our garden! So far there have been between 5-12 students from all different countries who have participated in the class. We are hoping to get some parents involved as well.

Below: potato fritters with onion and tomato relish and a beet and warm goat cheese salad.
Left: Pujan &
Sosina are excited to finally eat!









Above: Pujan and Shazia are already expert cooks!
Left: Sosina, Ana and Perla prepare the salad from our garden.

Above left: Shazia serving up Dal. Above right: Jessica preparing the spinach for the Dal
Above left: Asmait, Arsema and Sosina on the first day of class. Above right: Julieta and Ernestina rinsing red lentils.

1 comment:

  1. This looks like so much fun and the food looks super tasty! Wish I was closer and could come by to help and eat!

    ReplyDelete