What does Thanksgiving mean for a group of Vermont teenagers? For Bianca Fernandez, Thanksgiving this year meant an opportunity to expose students to ideas of making, giving, and learning about where our food comes from. These topics feed into the larger concept of “being a good citizen in your community”. Bianca is an SEA services instructor at Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS), helping to administer the YEA (Youth Empowering Agriculture) program. This program administers experiential learning in the subject of agriculture and food systems professions.

First, students learned about origins. 

A guest speaker, Jill Adams, visited the high school and spoke about Abenaki food traditions. 

Jill cooked local food, like squash and fiddleheads, and connected it to Abenaki traditions like the Three Sisters and seed preservation. This, tied in with some upcoming lessons on Indian Boarding Schools, is a pathway for high school students to think about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, about how culture relates to food and the land that we are living on. Without this land and these traditions, we could not grow the food for our Thanksgiving meal. 

Next, students learned about the skills needed to pull off a community event. 

Students boarded a bus bound for Lisai’s Market, a fourth generation family-operated grocery store and a centerpiece of Bellows Falls. Here, after buying ingredients for the day’s feast, the BUHS students interviewed the cashiers, learning about the realities of working in the “market” part of a Vermont food system. 

We packed our ingredients onto the bus and drove to Westminster’s Butterfield Institute. In this community gathering space, students rotated between three learning stations. 

Station A, the best-smelling station, prepared turkey soup from scratch. Students learned safe knife-handling, herb-identification, and soup and salad-making. 

Station B, the most artistic station, handcrafted wreaths and decoupaged candle holders from mason jars. Students used locally harvested pine boughs and learned to identify Pussy Willow, Lunaria (Silver Dollar Plant), and Chinese Lantern flowers as they twined these plants into their wreaths. 

Station C gave students an opportunity to learn about community service and giving. Here, students baked apple crumble and pumpkin bread from scratch for donation to Westminster Center School families.  BUHS high schoolers handed off the baked goods to Westminster Center School third graders, creating a beautiful moment of big-sibling, inter-age interaction.

Finally, illuminated by the setting winter sun, 17 students from BUHS sat around a table almost as long as a basketball court. Down the center ran a row of wreaths and candle holders, both carefully crafted by students. In front of each student was a plate of salad, turkey stone soup, and sides. The sweetest part was, before digging in, hearing the students say what they were thankful for. Alongside gratitude for family members and loved ones, a majority of the students said they were thankful for “all you guys” in the SEA program with them. A moment of peace and reflection, giving acknowledgement to the supportive, loving community created within the SEA program.

Written by Adelaide Petrov-Yoo