Celebrating Latin American Heritage

For the past month, we have been celebrating Latine/x Heritage with lessons incorporated into our 8th grade garden and kitchen classes, as well as a special lunch service in the school cafeteria. In the garden, 8th-graders learned about culturally important crops cultivated within the space. For example, they learned to identify the traditional "Three Sisters" companion planting—squash, beans, and corn—along with other key crops like amaranth, sunflower, tithonia, and marigolds. Equipped with this knowledge, students participated in a harvest and created beautiful mandalas from the gathered plants.

In the kitchen, we focused on corn and its significance across almost all Latin American countries. Originally domesticated in Mexico thousands of years ago, corn is largely celebrated across Latin America with harvest festivals from Mexico down to Brazil. Each country has developed a wide variety of delicious dishes and drinks that are part of their own distinct culture. Students were introduced to many of these creations through a set of images, including: tortillas, chips, tamales, pamonha, curau, cuz cuz, bolo de milho, empanadas, funche, cou cou, arepas and…PUPUSAS. 

Following this exploration, students had the opportunity to make their own pupusas, crafting dough from scratch using masa harina. They filled the pupusas with cheese and black beans harvested from our garden. They also learned to prepare curtido—a traditional cabbage slaw—using fresh red cabbage and carrots from our garden! This hands-on experience connected students to the cultural heritage of Latin America through its most iconic and celebrated crop

We are excited to pilot a partnership with the school cafeteria this year. For this lesson, we collaborated to develop this pupusa recipe, and the cafeteria staff made them for the whole school last month. It was wonderful to see the pupusas and curtido served the same week the school celebrated Latin American Heritage with a beautiful and fun assembly led by the Latinx student club. We are excited to continue celebrating the different cultures that make our school so diverse and culturally rich!