Ms. Gao’s Chinese Cooking 101 provides Brattleboro Area Middle School students with an opportunity to learn life skills while getting exposed to a new culture. Ping Gao has a holistic approach to teaching. In her Chinese Culture Class, the curriculum covers the expected topics of Chinese language, history, geography, and culture. However, Ms. Gao is also invested in the emotional and social growth of her students.
This is why, every week, she offers multiple opportunities to cook Chinese food in her classroom. “I pick dishes that are really fast and easy to make, with ingredients that don’t cost a lot,” says Ms. Gao. Her goal is to give students the life skills needed to take care of themselves.
Almost all the students I interviewed had used Ms. Gao’s fried rice recipe at home, and some had even made dumplings with their families. She picks recipes that are easy, fast, inexpensive, and healthy. In this case, by healthy we mean they contain unprocessed ingredients like chopped cucumbers, cilantro, and homemade wheat flour noodles.
The homemade noodles take about 5 minutes to mix together; then, students fling and snap the dough into unfussy hand-pulled noodles. 7th and 8th grade girls chopped cucumber, cilantro, garlic and scallions. Meanwhile, two 8th grade boys boiled the noodles and scrambled eggs in a pan. Kids gathered around the table as Ms. Gao threw (literally) the ingredients into a bowl, poured on some hot oil, and mixed.
“It smells soooo good!” spontaneously commented several students, as the hot oil hit the garlic and scallions. Students went back for seconds and thirds of the noodles. When I asked students why they would take a Chinese class, most answered “the food!”
This is an excellent exposure to diversity. Not only exposure to different cultures and the ideas that come with it (we watched a YouTube clip on the “story” behind the Biang Biang noodle). It is also exposure to new types of food. I heard a few students say they wanted to try a little bit of the spicy noodles. It’s much easier to try a bite of something spicy when it's offered in class, than when you’re ordering a whole dish of it at a Chinese restaurant.
Speaking of which, not many Chinese restaurants in Brattleboro offer the kinds of entrees that Ms. Gao serves up. The students told me the menus they usually see in Chinese restaurants do not serve the kinds of dishes they cook in Ms. Gao’s class. Only the dumplings and fried rice overlap. All the other dishes are things you can’t necessarily access in Brattleboro. This class is a one-of-a-kind experience that you truly can’t get anywhere else in town.
Written by Adelaide Petrov-Yoo