By Sheila Humphreys
Kathy Cassin, Garden Coordinator, and her colleague Amelia Fontein, Kindergarten Teacher, at Academy School in Brattleboro, VT, recently brought magic into the lives of kindergarten students. It’s part of Ms. Kathy’s job to support classroom teachers in making gardening and cooking activities come alive at the school, and Ms. Kathy and Ms. Fontein definitely rose to the occasion this time!
First, kindergarteners read various gingerbread books in class as part of their literacy study. Then, Ms. Fontein invited Ms. Kathy in to make gingerbread people with the students as a culminating activity. The students all helped make the dough, each cutting out a gingerbread person. That’s when the fun began.
Ms. Fontein knew that her class was fascinated by scavenger hunts, and she proposed a creative idea to Ms. Kathy to make the lesson come to life for the students. The concept was to craft a story where the gingerbread cookies escaped from the oven, and students needed to find clues to help them find the missing cookies. This would be a lot to pull off for a busy classroom teacher on their own, but with Ms. Kathy’s help, the vision became a reality, and Ms. Kathy even happened to have a blinking gingerbread hat that was perfect for this special occasion! A while after taking the cookies to the kitchen to bake, Kathy returned to the classroom in her special hat with an important announcement—when she had gone to take the cookies out of the oven, those tricky gingerbread people all hopped out before she could catch them! They were hiding somewhere in the school! Luckily, the gingerbread people left some clues, and Ms. Kathy asked the students to help her find them.
And so the hunt began! They went to the front office, the library, and other places throughout the school, with students gleefully exclaiming, “I know where that is!” after solving each clue. Eventually, they found the cookies back in their classroom, where, according to one student, “they are so tired that they are taking a nap under the blanket!” (In fact, the cookies were hidden under a tea towel.) Once the cookies were found, the final step before eating them was to decorate them with their 6th-grade buddy class.
This is just one small example of a day in the life of Ms. Kathy, a recently retired classroom teacher who now has her dream job as the part-time garden coordinator at Academy School. Ms. Kathy works approximately 10 hours a week on cooking and gardening projects with about 350 students in grades K-6. In the fall and spring, the primary focus is on the school gardens, and during the winter months, the focus shifts to cooking. Some foods Ms. Kathy has made with students recently include latkes, beet smoothies, beet pancakes, pumpkin muffins, and winter squash roasted over the fire in the outdoor classroom. Kathy often bases her cooking lessons on the Vermont Harvest of the Month, a resource co-created by Food Connects, Green Mountain Farm to School, and Vital Communities.
We are so inspired by Ms. Kathy’s work to make food, farm, and nutrition education magical for her youngest students! Bravo, Kathy!