Spicing Up Science

How Teachers are using Food to Transform their Classrooms

By Annie Lee-Hassett
November 1, 2024

In classrooms across the country, middle and high school students are discovering that science isn't just something you read about in textbooks—it's something you can explore and experiment with through food and cooking. At the heart of this paradigm shift is the Science and Cooking for Secondary Science Educators Program, an initiative at the Harvard Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) designed and led by Kate Strangfeld, M.Ed. '22 along with Pia M. Sörensen, Senior Preceptor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Materials, and Kathryn Hollar, Director of Community Engagement and Diversity Outreach at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Sörensen explained that the program, spun out of Harvard's popular Science and Cooking course and public lecture series, "is tailored to empower middle and high-school teachers to use food and cooking as a medium to teach science and engineering that is also aligned to state secondary teaching standards." This program now provides complete instructional resources, professional learning opportunities, and hands-on activities to engage their students.

"This has completely transformed the way that I teach my class. I was able to take these otherwise really hard-to-understand chemistry concepts and translate them in a way that made sense to my students."

- Shawn Boggs
8th Grade Teacher from Shepherdsville, Kentucky

While many of the MRSEC education and outreach activities are focused in the Cambridge and Boston areas, Hollar pointed out that this initiative "from its inception reached a wide group of enthusiastic and passionate teachers." Indeed, at the core of this program are dedicated teachers like Mary Velasquez, a Montessori teacher teaching grades 4th - 6th from Cambridge, MA and Shawn Boggs, an 8th-grade science teacher from Shepherdsville, Kentucky. Both teachers participated in the program's first pilot workshop in the summer of 2023 and have been critical in building this initiative through their continued participation.

They spent several months in their classrooms teaching food-based science lessons from 2023-2024. Both teachers emphasized that by connecting science to something as familiar as food, the program makes abstract concepts more accessible and engaging for students. Velasquez recounted "I saw my students getting excited about science in a way I had never seen before. Their confidence just soared." Boggs shared similar experiences, saying "this has completely transformed the way that I teach my class. I was able to take these otherwise really hard-to-understand chemistry concepts and translate them in a way that made sense to my students."

One of the goals of the program is to build a community of teachers deeply engaged in this work who can support and inspire each other. Velasquez and Boggs joined Strangfeld and another teacher who participated in 2023 workshop, Meredith Moore, a high school chemistry teacher from Washington, D.C., to share their experiences by presenting at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) annual national conference in Denver in March 2023. Together, they led 4 sessions, reaching more than 225 teachers. Three of these sessions were hands-on workshops in which participants made fresh cheese, created dough, and experimented with different brands of baking powder to explore the underlying properties of these soft materials and their ingredients.

The popularity of the NSTA workshops garnered greater interest in the program. Over 100 teachers applied for 26 spots open to the 2024-2025 cohort. Strangfeld said the visibility of the conference "helped us expand our reach to new areas in the U.S. 75% of our participants this year were from out-of-state and traveled to Harvard to be a part of this program. I think it speaks to the value both teachers and their districts see in this type of learning."

Velasquez and Boggs also helped Strangfeld facilitate and lead workshops for new participants this past summer. 26 new teachers from 24 states came to campus for an intensive 4 days of professional learning, followed by 4 days of virtual learning. When discussing Velasquez and Bogg's help, Strangfeld shared, "Their involvement was invaluable. It is important that this program is rooted in what is truly going on in the classroom. Mary and Shawn could share tips about how to do this in back-to-back classes with many students, how to support and empower students to design their own investigations, and how to build students' understanding over time."

As this school year starts, teachers new to the program are beginning to implement these lessons for the first time, while others like Boggs and Velasquez are building on what they learned from their experiences last year. Boggs plans to expand her food science curriculum from one semester into an entire school year. Velasquez noted, "I'm excited to collaborate with other educators and continue to grow this community of practice around food science in the classroom." To continue to build this active community network, educators stay connected through Zoom meetings and Slack, a team-based communication app, throughout the school year. "The support from my colleagues and the community we built through this program was crucial to my growth as an educator," Velasquez said.

Over 1,600 students are participating in the program this year. For more information about Harvard's Science and Cooking Secondary Science Teachers Program and upcoming workshops, please visit our website.

Authorship, funding, disclosures

The workshop and training class was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Harvard University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center grant DMR-2011754.