Educator spotlight: Food Lab helps students learn to cook, where food really comes from

Ryan Campbell, Food Lab’s instructor, said the course gives students a chance to learn about food: Not just how it’s used, but where it comes from.

Because the class uses fresh produce from the garden, there can be a sense of satisfaction of not having just made the food, but also having grown it. Though Food Lab isn’t responsible for growing the food — that’s done by another one of Campbell’s classes, Green Design—many kids take both.

“My ultimate favorite, personally, and I think it was especially relevant to a lot of our students, was … we grew Mexican corn in Green Design and harvested it. We dried it and then through that class husk the corn,” he said. “And then we next analyze that and students ground the corn into fresh masa. That will then be made into tortillas. So it was literally students planted the seeds last year and then ground the corn into a masa this year. And that’s my vision for the program.”

Even when it can’t be in-house because of the seasons, Campbell said they still make sure they have whole foods.

“We use tomatoes from the garden,” he said. “But like this winter, when we do it, I’ll buy ripe, fresh tomatoes.”

Campbell said Food Lab is very hands-on and students get a chance to learn about cooking firsthand, rather than just reading from a book. Not only that, he said, but they get to eat everything they make, which can be a great reward.

“The first week of school, we made chocolate chip cookies,” he said. “And so I heard, ‘This is the best, this is the best cookie I’ve ever had.’ And the reason it’s the best that they’ve ever had is because they actually did it themselves. I think that’s really powerful.”

Throughout the class, they also delve into a variety of different recipes. Not all of them are strict step-by-step recipes, Campbell said. In fact, for the vast majority, he’ll do a demo with a specific skill, but the kids are encouraged to improvise and figure out what they really like.

For example, there was one demo when he taught them to cook a potato, he said.

“Cooking the potato is really kind of like a knife skills lesson where we talked about how to cut a potato safely, and just basic skills like different cuts with a knife,” he said. “But then it’s like I told them to fry in the pans with some oil. And I was pretty vague. They didn’t have a recipe, but they’re cooking. And I think that’s a much more practical version of what cooking really is right? People don’t use recipes for everything that they cook, and I want to convey that as well. And then it gave them the chance to explore how much salt to add and what seasonings they wanted.”

This is Campbell’s first year teaching Food Lab, though the program has been going on for several years now, he said. Taking it over has been interesting, and he’s really enjoyed figuring out his style for approaching cooking and food with the students.

Campbell was originally hired last year to teach Food Lab, but with the pandemic he was switched to doing health and P.E. Health was three days a week and P.E. was two, but with it being online it was a little different than normal. On P.E. days, kids were given options of physical activities to do during a Google Meet at the beginning of class, and then everyone would leave to go do them.

When they came back to limited hours in the spring, they could do P.E., they just had to mind social distancing rules, Campbell said.

“We were still able to play games,” he said. “We played a lot of Frisbee. And, you know, everybody was matched up the whole time. And we would sanitize our hands before and afterwards, and we kept our social distance.”

Though Campbell has only been teaching at Hood River Middle School these last two years, he said he’s really enjoyed both of the roles he’s played, and that his favorite part is always the students.

“I try to look for students who may be isolated or on the fringe for whatever reason,” he said. “I really look and really try to find those students and make a difference for them. I want to make school a positive experience for them.”