Green Street School’s French teacher, Alice Charkes, fondly known as “Madame” by her students, has been integrating cooking and gardening into her curriculum for many years. This fall, her job looks a bit different. She is teaching French remotely 3 days a week, and she is one of the 4th-grade classroom teachers 2 days a week for hybrid in-person instruction.

Initially daunted by the shift from foreign language teacher to a classroom teacher, Alice seized this opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons—which she normally does with second graders each year as citron pressé—and build on some of the things she loves into the classroom, even more, this year. Smaller class sizes (Madame has 5 students in her classroom) and more time with students allows Madame to do more cooking with students than ever before. So far this year, she has made a chickpea and fresh herb salad inspired by French chef Grégory Cohen and individual pizzas. She plans to make French gingerbread and cookies later this month. 

Madame found that there are some unexpected benefits to cooking with students during COVID-19. For example, in the past, she would have small groups of students prepare different aspects of the recipe but in order to keep the spread of germs to a minimum, she divides up all of the ingredients ahead of time and each student makes their own small portion of each dish, so they learn to make the recipe from start to finish and they taste the food that they created on their own, exactly the way they like it. For example, when she made pizzas with students in November, each student had their own ball of pizza dough that they formed and shaped themselves. They topped their pizzas with freshly made tomato sauce made with tomatoes and herbs from the school garden, cheese, and toppings of their choice including mushrooms, peppers, onions, and pineapple.

Naturally, Alice incorporates French into her cooking lessons. She was teaching her students pizza vocabulary (fromage, champignon, sauce tomate, poivron, etc.) for several weeks. Making pizzas together was the culminating project for that unit. Students asked for ingredients by their French names and played Hangman with French pizza vocabulary while the individual pies were baking.

Madame has taught a pizza unit to fourth graders for many years but this is the first time that she felt that she had the capacity to actually make pizza with students. Having a small group of students all day made it possible to do a creative cooking project that would have been impossible with a whole class of students during a 30-minute foreign language lesson. In addition, thanks to a mini-grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield to purchase a cooking cart for the school, Madame and her students had everything they needed on the cart to prepare food together, including cutting boards, graters, baking sheets, and a convection oven. 

Madame also received help from Food Connects’ Farm to School program coordinator, Sheila Humphreys. They began by brainstorming together about the project. As plans took shape, Sheila was able to offer concrete support by helping Madame collect ingredients and joining Madame and her students in the classroom while cooking. Food Connects staff traditionally support member schools (like Green Street School) through coaching Farm to School teams and providing technical assistance to school nutrition programs and don't often work directly with students in classrooms but given the unusual circumstances of this school year and the increased challenge of cooking with students during COVID-19, we were happy to help out!

Alice is also working on a French garden sign-making project with Green Street School art teacher Rachel Mangean. In the spring, garden beds will have bilingual signage created by students identifying the crops grown by students. Encouraged by the success of this year’s pizza making, Madame is brainstorming with garden coordinator Tara Gordon about growing more potential pizza toppings in the school garden next year. Finally, she initiated the development of Vermont Harvest of the Month posters in French and Spanish and assisted with French translations for the posters. Alice Charkes, ‘Madame,’ is truly a Farm to School champion!

If you are interested in cooking with students during COVID-19 but aren’t sure where to start, please check out these cooking guidelines for ideas on how to do so safely.

Bon appetit!