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All In Good Taste is a podcast about the craft, culture, and people who make hospitality unforgettable. Hosted by Aidan Descourouez, it’s real conversation, the late nights, the early mornings, and the stories that remind us why this industry matters.
Our mission as a public school is to reimagine the future of education. We really built this six and a half acre campus as a sustainable community for community members to plug in. We have a fresh food market place where families and community members and neighbors can come and get access to fresh food.
Aidan Descourouez:How young are you teaching kitchen skills?
Bryan Soto:As young as three years old. Okay.
Sarah Elizabeth:Yeah. Food coming from our farm, honey from our apiary. We also have a community love fridge that's accessible to our community twenty four hours a day. Gardens, wellness facilities, all
Aidan Descourouez:of these
Sarah Elizabeth:layers are teaching kitchens, you know, ways for people to plug into this kind of wellness ecosystem. This
Kris De la Torre:space is about volume because we are feeding over 500 students two times a day plus a snack.
Sarah Elizabeth:It's those beautiful moments where you see kids connecting with their food source in a totally different way.
Bryan Soto:They love their playtime. They love their recess time. So when I make the connection of eating a banana and then having more energy, it makes it very easy to connect with the kids.
Kris De la Torre:It's really about one, on its most basic level, being outside is not a thing to be fearful of.
Stacey Whitney:Well fed people function better.
Aidan Descourouez:That's out of their statement. I'm Aiden Desser and you're listening to All In Good Taste. That slide is way faster than I expected it to be.
Bryan Soto:Today, we
Aidan Descourouez:are seated in the Academy for Global Citizenship, this amazing, amazing school on the South Side here of Chicago. I'm seated with the incredible founder, Sarah Elizabeth. I don't think there's a better person to introduce this than her herself. Can you tell us a little bit about where we are?
Sarah Elizabeth:Absolutely. We're here at the Academy for Global Citizenship on the Southwest Side Of Chicago, where our mission as a public school is to reimagine the future of education.
Aidan Descourouez:I love that. Can you tell me a little bit about the first time that you realized that a school like this needed to exist?
Sarah Elizabeth:A couple of decades ago in my early 20s, I was confronted with the reality of our time in terms of sort of the systemic inequities and disparities that were happening in terms of access to education.
Kris De la Torre:Yeah.
Sarah Elizabeth:And felt the sense of urgency that we need to reimagine education in a way that is cultivating this next generation of mindful leaders.
Aidan Descourouez:I know it also took you a lot of work to I get think we talked about this in our first conversation. How long did it actually take to get this school approved? Because this is a CPS school, correct?
Sarah Elizabeth:Exactly, exactly. Yep. We are part of the Chicago Public Education System here and it took three years. So when I was 23 and had this conviction and this belief
Aidan Descourouez:So bold. 23 being like, I am opening up a school. I love it, but
Sarah Elizabeth:Yep. I rode my bike to the Board of Education very naively and idealistically and said it is time to reimagine education. And I just explained all of this to them, right? This idea to incorporate environmental sustainability and global citizenship and health and well-being. And as you might imagine, they looked at me quite confused.
Sarah Elizabeth:Yes. And needless to say, know, had to go back year after year revising this proposal and eventually the school was approved after three years.
Aidan Descourouez:And I know one of the things that are obviously in the name, Global Citizenship. What does global citizenship mean to you?
Sarah Elizabeth:Oh my goodness. Well, global citizenship for us here means that we need to be empowering a generation with a sense of agency, a sense of awareness around their role in making the world a better place. And so environmental sustainability and international mindedness, you know, here we're a biliterate dual language school. So all of our students are learning in two languages. That's All of these skills and aptitudes are so important for us to, you know, to be leaders in the world.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah. And I know one of the other really big features that was really inspiring to me is you also have this incredible farm program, you have this incredible culinary program. I remember the first time walking to school and you're like, there's a kitchen in every classroom. Can you tell me just a little bit about that too and what that sort of education does as we're teaching these young minds?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, our founding mission here integrating health and well-being and environmental sustainability and global citizenship and weaving those principles into the way that we've defined education. We believe that we can't talk about planetary health without talking about human health and vice versa, right? We have an incredible food program here. We take well-being very seriously.
Aidan Descourouez:Can you tell me what is the most personal reason that got you excited about this work or what inspired you to really want to do this and make this your life's journey?
Sarah Elizabeth:While I was in graduate school, I became very curious about the world and started traveling with my backpack, staying in youth hostels. And as a way to immerse myself in local cultures and context, I started visiting schools out of curiosity. And this sparked in me this desire to go and explore and learn and study different international systems of education and eventually visited schools in over 100 countries. And throughout that experience, I saw some of the most incredible innovation happening globally, right? Yeah.
Sarah Elizabeth:And of course, at the same time, the disparities and the inequities, not only in terms of our education systems, but how the the sort of the state of our planet and the state of our environment. And that moving to Chicago and and and quickly being confronted with this not just being a global issue, but this also being very local and feeling a sense of urgency and a conviction that we need to reimagine education. We need to think differently about how we are preparing young people for this world.
Aidan Descourouez:For the world. Yeah. And I know this is also, I believe your second campus, correct? Or am I, am I off on that? Or has there been more campuses then?
Sarah Elizabeth:It's been an adventure. So we opened in 2008, we opened in a former dental tool factory. So, you know, part of the part of the the the spirit, you know, behind the founding was we really wanted to create this incredibly innovative educational model in an underserved, in the most underserved part of our city. Yeah. And so we opened in this former dental tool factory, and then we upgraded, we moved to a former barrel factory in our second year because we were growing the school, you know, and we now have almost 600 students.
Sarah Elizabeth:This is But we start with just kindergarten and first grade. We moved to a third facility or we expanded into a third facility.
Aidan Descourouez:So I was way off by two campuses because we're already on three.
Sarah Elizabeth:I guess this is our fourth Yeah.
Aidan Descourouez:Well, it's really cool. And what made you select here specifically?
Sarah Elizabeth:You know, at the time, twenty years ago, the city, Chicago Public Schools did an analysis on the highest need areas in terms of, overcrowded schools, underperforming schools and overcrowded parts of city. Yeah. And so that's why we had to get very creative and scrappy with our facilities because there weren't vacant school buildings kind of laying around. And now here, here, in terms of where we are in this moment, we are surrounded by about 40 acres of public housing. So we are here centered as kind of a hub surrounded by a Chicago Housing Authority community called the Clair Courts that's currently going through redevelopment.
Sarah Elizabeth:So we're soon gonna have about 700 units of housing surrounding this sustainable campus.
Aidan Descourouez:It's amazing that you have this right here too, to be able to take in, you know, these families, educate the children. I know you do a bunch of programs and things where you're also providing them like community gardens and things, right? And that can kind of go back to the community that's being built around you. So it's really, really, truly incredible what you're building here. Thank you so much for having us in your space.
Aidan Descourouez:I think best now is maybe we head on over to one of the classrooms and we kind of walk and talk there if
Sarah Elizabeth:that
Kris De la Torre:sounds Love it. Good
Sarah Elizabeth:Okay, let's do it.
Aidan Descourouez:Great. What would we call this? Would this be the stair library? What we looking at here, Sarah? I know we're going on a walk on up here, but
Sarah Elizabeth:We call this our heart. Okay. It's really sort of the center of our campus. Yeah. And so it's a place where we gather, you know, yes, it's a library.
Sarah Elizabeth:But it's also a gathering place when we've got, you know, we've got people coming from all over the world to come and visit and We've speak with our got assemblies that happen here.
Aidan Descourouez:I know we saw kids getting ready to go on a field trip which today is pretty, pretty great. I hear that you also do like a bunch of field trips in the community kind of showing off the different places and everything that's going on here too.
Sarah Elizabeth:We believe the world is our classroom so students are often embarking and going on these expeditionary learning experiences.
Aidan Descourouez:That's great. And now we're up on the 2nd Floor here, which I believe is where all the classrooms are, correct?
Sarah Elizabeth:You will not believe this, but we built a new campus that has no classrooms.
Aidan Descourouez:No have classrooms. My apologies.
Sarah Elizabeth:We have what's called villages. And so we have created these multi age kind of communal villages where our educators collaborate with each other to support all of our students and the different ways that they learn best.
Aidan Descourouez:Super cool. Yeah. Well, let's kind of walk around and go find one of our villages here if
Kris De la Torre:we may.
Aidan Descourouez:Now we're sitting down in one of the learning villages here with Mr. So to. Mr. So to. Mr.
Aidan Descourouez:So to, tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do? What are your interests? How long have you been with AGC? Kind of give me a little bit of your background here.
Bryan Soto:Well, I've been at AGC going on thirteen years. It'll be thirteen years this November. Wow. The day that I stepped in was literally stepping into a building and asking if they had a job available. Back then, my goal was to be a fourth or fifth grade teacher.
Bryan Soto:That is really the age group that I saw myself working with. I never really wanted to work with very young students. I thought that the needs that they would have would be much greater than what I was prepared to give. Right? And they told me that no, they were good on the fourth, fifth grade teachers, but they needed a health and wellness teacher.
Aidan Descourouez:Okay.
Bryan Soto:And so I asked like, is this is this a gym teacher? Is this like just a health? Like, what is that? What is a health and wellness teacher? Exactly.
Bryan Soto:And so they started telling me about the holistic approach that AGC has towards health and wellness with our students. Told me about the wellness wheel, told me about social emotional well-being, environmental wellness. And this as a concept in school was new to me.
Aidan Descourouez:I mean, it sounds incredibly new to me. This is the first time I've really ever really heard about it in space. So, it's really cool to hear about it from you.
Bryan Soto:Yeah, the way that I grew up, it was just a health class, it was very, you know, traditional learning. You're sitting in rows, your teacher's giving you the information, you're memorizing it, regurgitating it, and getting a grade. And what it was here was really like talking about what makes a good person a good person. What makes a person balanced with their environment? What makes a person respectful towards others, towards their space, towards themselves?
Bryan Soto:And all of that is what the wellness wheel helps to kind of break down in a way that's easy to, for students to understand. So, said, you know what? This, it sounds like a good opportunity. I would love to try it out and then we'll see what happens. My first day doing a demo lesson at school tanked because this school is just so different from what I was used to, right?
Bryan Soto:Kids had flexible seating, and there was a carpet on the floor. And I remember there was a couch in the middle of the classroom. And when I walked in, it looked like a living room.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, you were like, Woah. Looked like a house.
Bryan Soto:And I was like, How am I supposed to set down classroom expectations when we're in a living room? Yeah. So, it was very hard for me. I stayed after school that day. I asked that teacher, that classroom teacher, Trae Thompson, the time, like, What can I do?
Bryan Soto:Like, tell me and I'll figure it out. And he just gave me a lot of advice, gave me a little breakdown of what the school was like and what I could expect. And the next day I came back, did another demo lesson and rocked it. Right? And it was me coming in, much more flexible, not having an expectation of wanting my kids to do exactly what I did when I was in their shoes, but realizing that I'm in a different space.
Bryan Soto:Yeah. This is a different culture. Whole different thing. And I'm the outsider that's coming in. So let me see what I can do to make myself a part of this culture.
Bryan Soto:And once I made that mind shift, it's been great. So I've grown in this position in these thirteen years as part of teaching health and wellness. I realized that I was going to teach kids about nutrition, and I realized that I wanted to make my job as fun as possible, right? If I'm with kids, like,
Aidan Descourouez:Let's make it fun. Let's make it fun.
Bryan Soto:There were some teachers that had previously brought food education lessons into the classroom, but it was very one off. Yeah. It wasn't totally It wasn't like a full,
Aidan Descourouez:yeah, which I think is something that I actually want to jump in like right here on because we're sitting right now in the kitchen space in the village because once again, we don't call the classroom in the village. How young are you teaching kitchen skills? When does this start? I would just love to hear a little bit more about that.
Bryan Soto:Yeah, absolutely. So, in this village, these are the kindergarteners and the first graders. Okay. Since we follow a multi age model. And so, in this space, you'll find students five, six, or seven years old.
Bryan Soto:Gotcha. We also have an ECL program in the school. I don't work directly with them, but every now and then I'll come and do a cooking activity with them. That kind of is like a culminating activity for whatever, unit they've been focusing on. Gotcha.
Bryan Soto:And when I work with ECL, I go down as young as three years old. Okay. So, are we
Aidan Descourouez:teaching knife skills at three years old?
Bryan Soto:We're not teaching knife skills. At that point, it's, the ingredients. Gotcha. The benefits of the ingredients. So, they love their playtime.
Bryan Soto:They love their recess time. So, when I make the connection of eating a banana and then having more energy
Aidan Descourouez:to go do playtime.
Bryan Soto:To go have fun and then still having energy to learn new skills, makes it very easy to connect with the kids.
Aidan Descourouez:And I think it's really interesting too, because you did share with me, you know, the last time I met you when we briefly chatted that you have this mushroom club that has kind of exploded, right?
Bryan Soto:Like mushrooms do.
Aidan Descourouez:Just like mushrooms do. So much so that you got so much interest, you had to launch a second mushroom club, right? Can you tell me a bit about that? Absolutely. How did you get all of these kids to buy into fungus, mushrooms?
Aidan Descourouez:How did you get that to
Stacey Whitney:happen?
Bryan Soto:It actually started here in this space. It started out here. I was standing right there in that space, and we were learning about soil health of And all we started learning about how some plants and some flowers can help remediate the soil. I talked about how sunflowers are very good at that. And they stand out, and they're proud, and you can see them from far away, and they're beautiful flowers.
Bryan Soto:But there are other helpers out in nature that don't always get the recognition that they deserve. Our unsung heroes. And then I introduced them to mushrooms and I said, Look, these are the benefits that they provide our world. This is why they're here. This is how they break everything down.
Bryan Soto:And they're delicious. And kids were like, Woah! Can we try them, Mr. So to? Do you guys want to try them?
Bryan Soto:Yeah. Yes! If I bring them, will we all be risk takers here? Yes, Mr. So to, we will.
Bryan Soto:All right. So, I brought them in. I cooked them in front of the kids. They helped me with the seasoning.
Aidan Descourouez:Can I ask what you cooked for this introductory mushroom meal for the kids? Pizza. Pizza. Okay.
Bryan Soto:I had to do the pizza.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's the best
Bryan Soto:sign It I've was a good one. Yeah, once I said pizza, the kids were already bought in. Some of them had their opinions, strong opinions regarding mushrooms, and they didn't want to try it. But what ended up happening was there was so much excitement around them that it became contagious. So even the kids that weren't super open to trying them, they were willing to.
Bryan Soto:Another thing that helped out was I brought really cool mushrooms. I brought pink oyster mushrooms. And so, the pink in a mushroom was so new to them that they were all just curious, just naturally curious the way that kids are. And so I'm leveraging their curiosity. Really fueling them.
Aidan Descourouez:To
Bryan Soto:bring in these concepts that even some adults, they haven't been exposed to. Yeah. Right? So after they tried the pizza and loved it, then the next question was, Mr. So to, how can we get more of this in the school?
Bryan Soto:And I said, Do you guys really want to keep learning about this? I said, Yes. So the only way that I can do this without interrupting all of the other units that I already had planned was by staying after school and opening up a space for students that were curious about mushrooms and saying, you know what? We got a mushroom club now. And I told the kids, look, you have to talk to your parents because it's a commitment.
Bryan Soto:You're staying an hour after school. They have to pick you up. It's a responsibility. And it started with a small group, four or five kids, I think. Yeah.
Bryan Soto:Then week after week, they would talk about the activities that we did, what they learned, and their friends came up to me and said, How can I join? Talk to your parents. How can I join? Talk to your parents. And then eventually, my first session filled with over 20 students.
Bryan Soto:Wow. And I said, I can't do this anymore because then it's not a club. It's a whole clash room.
Aidan Descourouez:Oh, yeah. It's another class.
Bryan Soto:And it becomes a little unmanageable. And so, what I decided to do was my club was on Tuesdays. So, I said, Look, all of the younger students, Tuesday. All of my older students, Thursday. Gave me a day in between to prep.
Bryan Soto:And sure enough, the Thursday club filled up as well. So, twice a week, fully booked clubs, and we were growing the mushrooms and taking them home and caring for them over the weekend, and eventually they came back. We harvested them. We cleaned them. We cooked them.
Bryan Soto:We invited parents over. We had a mushroom themed potluck where grandparents were invited, other staff members were invited. This mushroom was spored by the mushroom, and they grew so much that our admin took notice. And it was like, well, if they're asking for it, why don't we bring this super healthy ingredient into our food program? Like, we are perfectly positioned to make And this I talked with our culinary director, had several meetings.
Bryan Soto:And then I remember the day that we introduced shiitake mushrooms. Kids were literally clapping as they were looking at their lunch. There was applause. Kids were like finishing up their soup and coming up and giving me high fives. And that's when I realized how much power there really was.
Bryan Soto:It became a school wide movement. And that has resulted in, you know, being invited to speak in different places. And I mean, you mentioned it, I was awarded the Teacher of the Year Award
Aidan Descourouez:love for the Controversy. Hear little bit more about that. Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Bryan Soto:Absolutely. Yeah. So, the Illinois State Board of Education every year nominates a group of 13 educators across the state and awards them with this Teacher of the Year award for their region. We're in the region of Cook County, which is the largest one in the state. I was one of the three co regional winners, the only one representing CPS and the only one representing the city of Chicago.
Bryan Soto:Wow. Part of what made my nomination such a standout nomination is the work that I'm doing with students through the Mushroom Club and incorporating it into our health and wellness program, is already pretty unique in and of itself. Then you add this other component and it just makes it like something totally special that I think people immediately realize how special it is. And everyone is curious and everyone has questions. It's not always easy to get those gears going, but once you have student buy in, it's like gravity, it just takes over and you just have to match students' energies.
Bryan Soto:Yeah, that's great.
Aidan Descourouez:I do have one more question for me just because this is something that I witnessed actually the first time I met you and I was standing in the background with Sarah Elizabeth and just kind of watching you in the cafeteria And I believe I remember watching you see like this moment of gratitude or something like that. Yes. And can you tell us a little bit about how you brought that into the space?
Bryan Soto:Absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that I realized is if you're going to really teach kids to appreciate their food and to respect it and to have buy in and knowing that this is not just something we do, but it's something that nourishes. It's like a conscious decision that we can make for our benefit. We also need to keep in mind all of the work that's gone into the food. Yeah.
Bryan Soto:And that doesn't include that's not only the person that gave it to you, but it's all of the work in the background. Somebody had to wash it. Somebody had to prep it. Somebody had to plan for it. Somebody had to grow it.
Bryan Soto:Somebody had to transport it. And it's all of these unspoken heroes that are working in the background day and night. And oftentimes kids are just looking at the meal and making a quick decision. Do I like it or not? And that's it.
Bryan Soto:We don't give it much thought. I felt that it was so important for us to just take a moment to kind of like stop what we're doing and really think about all of the effort and all of the energy that's gone in and show some appreciation to the people that have done it. And so we have this, this saying that we say like every day, on Fridays, we say it in Spanish. And we really just take a moment to thank everybody that's been involved, that's grown the food, everybody that's served it. And then at the very end, we ask all the students to turn around and look at our kitchen staff and we thank them directly.
Bryan Soto:And it's just a way of developing these really positive habits and this positive relationship with our food and everybody that helps to provide. The hope is that eventually they're the providers. And then they're also passing on these messages of how connected we are and how important of a ritual it is to just sit and show gratitude for everything that's nourishing us. Yeah. Mr.
Bryan Soto:So to, thank you
Aidan Descourouez:so much. I want to know how I can get a seat in one of your classrooms. I can listen to you talk the whole
Bryan Soto:time. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.
Aidan Descourouez:Thank you so much for your time. What you're doing here is incredible. And one last time, congratulations as well.
Bryan Soto:Thank you so much, Ada, for joining here.
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Aidan Descourouez:Is this what's on the menu every single day we have up on the screen here?
Sarah Elizabeth:Your students are obviously, you know, kind of traversing through here multiple times a day. And so they get like a little glimpse of what's going to be on the menu today. We've got crispy tofu.
Aidan Descourouez:Love it.
Sarah Elizabeth:And you can see some beautiful greens that I think are coming from our
Aidan Descourouez:That's awesome. Yeah. I'm so excited to check out the farm and see all that here too. Thank you so much for sharing all about that. And I love that we got to get a little impromptu singing performance in there.
Aidan Descourouez:I think we're gonna go meet the head chef, and we're gonna go walk over to the cafeteria and see what it looks like to feed 600 kids every day. That's incredible. Let's go for a stroll, shall we?
Sarah Elizabeth:Okay, let's do it.
Aidan Descourouez:Let's do it. Now we are standing in the kitchen and the cafeteria here. I would love to introduce Stacy, the culinary director here. And I just kind of want to jump in and learn a little bit about your background. What brought you here?
Aidan Descourouez:Oh, it's an interesting story.
Stacey Whitney:So there was a culinary director here several years ago before we came to this building.
Aidan Descourouez:Gotcha.
Stacey Whitney:His name is Efrain Cuevas.
Aidan Descourouez:Okay.
Stacey Whitney:And we met in Chicago back in 2005. We did some underground supper club dinners
Aidan Descourouez:Okay. Super cool.
Stacey Whitney:For several Yeah. So all over the city, in undisclosed locations and gardens.
Aidan Descourouez:So it's a little pop ups, right?
Stacey Whitney:Yeah. Pop ups, gardens, libraries, museums, and just had a lot of fun doing that. And our focus was always seasonality and there was always a theme. Yeah. So that's how we met and we became friends over the years.
Stacey Whitney:I'm from California.
Aidan Descourouez:Okay.
Stacey Whitney:Efrain moved to California. I moved back to California. So then we were together in California.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Stacey Whitney:While he's in California and after I moved back to Chicago.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Stacey Whitney:He sent me a message saying, hey, I worked at this really great school.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Stacey Whitney:And they're looking for a head chef at the time. Chef they were looking for. Are you interested? And I said, of course, because it really, I read more about AGC and their mission, our mission. And it was totally in alignment with how I feel
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, how you feel, what you want to do, right?
Stacey Whitney:Exactly. So I applied for that position, didn't get that position.
Aidan Descourouez:Gotcha.
Stacey Whitney:And that position was given to someone else. But about six months later, I was called and said, Hey, we would really like to talk to you about being our culinary director. Yeah. So I interviewed and then that did work out. So now I'm here.
Stacey Whitney:But my background is of course in food. I have a bachelor's degree in culinary management. Have a degree in pastry and baking. A lot of my food history has been in food justice, working with incarcerated youth and formerly incarcerated college students and young children in underserved communities, just showing them the relationship between what's on their plate and what grows in the ground.
Aidan Descourouez:So this sounds like it was a natural fit for
Stacey Whitney:It was a natural fit.
Aidan Descourouez:And you know, I think there's a couple really important things that you mentioned there. What makes food central to education for you in your perspective?
Stacey Whitney:Well fed people function better.
Aidan Descourouez:That's, I mean, that's a fair statement.
Stacey Whitney:How do you work? How do you learn? Biologically, you need certain nutrients in order for your brain to function. Food is fundamental to learning, to working, to breathing, to everything. I think that we need to prioritize it as such and make sure that people are getting the nutrients they need to function at their maximum capacity.
Aidan Descourouez:What are you trying to change about how people think about school food specifically?
Stacey Whitney:I think historically there's been this identity as it being kind of junk food, lunch junk food, and it doesn't need to be that. And I feel that we've kind of, I think that whole food has become abstract for
Aidan Descourouez:a
Stacey Whitney:lot of children and it's important that we teach students what whole food is. Gotcha. Again, because of the nutrient element and making sure that they're getting food that's really feeding their brains also.
Kris De la Torre:Yeah.
Aidan Descourouez:On that same note, what do you want a child to feel at lunch every day when they come and dine with you here?
Stacey Whitney:I want them to feel that food is fun. You know, I want them to enjoy their experience in community hall. I want them to know that we love them and that we care about them, which is why we're giving them the food that we're giving them.
Bryan Soto:Yeah.
Aidan Descourouez:Can you tell me what is on the menu right now? What are we, what are we serving today?
Stacey Whitney:Today is one of the favorites. We've got crispy tofu. Okay. So, it's breaded tofu, kind of like a fried chicken kind of seasoning, but it's baked and that's being served with mashed potatoes.
Aidan Descourouez:Delicious.
Stacey Whitney:And they love it. I I know
Sarah Elizabeth:also,
Aidan Descourouez:forgot you guys serve a pretty predominantly vegetarian for menu here or can you plant based? My apologies.
Stacey Whitney:So about 75% of the menu is plant based.
Aidan Descourouez:That's that's incredible. And I know a lot of it is grown out back to which we are about to walk in a little bit and kinda talk with the farm team there soon. Can I ask you, preparation? What does it look like for you to feed 600 students every single day?
Stacey Whitney:Well, fortunately, we have an incredible team. So we have a total of 14 staff members in our kitchen. And all of them have been cross trained. So anyone can jump in at any capacity and bake or prepare the salad bar or make salads. So we really have a well oiled machine of compassionate people.
Stacey Whitney:Most of them have students. Have children who are students here. So, they're also invested in making sure that the students are getting what they need nutritionally. And everyone works really well together, and we're, you know, kind of like a little family, so it functions.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah. Students first come here, how do you get them to, you know, buy into food that might be a little bit healthier or a little bit more unfamiliar for them?
Stacey Whitney:One of the things we're fortunate in having are learning kitchens in our classrooms. And many of our teachers are fantastic culinary instructors in their classrooms. I've been working with them, specifically Mr. So to and Mr. Brown to teach kind of what we're growing or what we're serving in the kitchen, in the classrooms so that once they come to the kitchen or once they come to community hall, it's not unfamiliar.
Aidan Descourouez:And then if there's anything else that you could tell us about like building a space or a cafeteria like this, let's talk if like there was, you know, other schools who wanted to switch and focus on these sort things. Is there any advice that you could give to anyone else who would be running a program like this?
Stacey Whitney:Start small and get as much community and student feedback as possible so that you're setting yourself up for success because it's not nutrition and the students aren't eating it. We wanna make sure that whatever we're serving or whatever grand ideas we have are also in alignment with what the children are willing to try.
Aidan Descourouez:Got you. And then one last one, just out of curiosity. What is your favorite thing to make to cook to bake personally?
Stacey Whitney:Personally?
Aidan Descourouez:Here or outside of the store.
Stacey Whitney:Here or anywhere?
Aidan Descourouez:Here or anywhere.
Stacey Whitney:Oh, wow. That's quiche.
Aidan Descourouez:Quiche. Any type of quiche or just
Stacey Whitney:I like I like doing a refrigerator dump of whatever.
Aidan Descourouez:I love it. Love it. I love it. Thank you so much for your time, Stacy. It's been fantastic.
Stacey Whitney:My pleasure.
Aidan Descourouez:So we just finished chatting with Chef Stacy, and now we're hanging out in the cafeteria. You have a super cool cafeteria here with a beautiful kitchen in the background. Can you tell us a little bit about the energy, what it feels like in here when it's full of all the kids?
Sarah Elizabeth:It's pretty magical. I mean, so as I've shared, you know, health and well-being is so central to the ethos and the mission here at AGC. And so what ends up on our students plates and the way that that's integrating into our curriculum and into our educational experience is so central to what we believe is important.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Sarah Elizabeth:That did not answer your questions.
Aidan Descourouez:No, no, you're perfect. No, that's great. But I feel like you're right on the right thing, right? The energy in here when I stopped in here last time, it was super, super cool to see. We had some of the educators, you know, like leading a thanks thing at the end, like saying what everybody's thankful for, which I thought was super inspiring.
Aidan Descourouez:How do you get that kind of, you know, culture into a cafeteria? I remember the cafeterias that I grew up in. How do you inspire all of that, like gratefulness and all of that joy and like excitement here with all the kids?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, I think it starts with, education, right? Our students are learning about where their food comes from. They're embarking on field trips to local farms. They're spending time out on our farm, you know, and learning about kind of those connections, learning about their food sources and then seeing these beautiful, you know, when you walk through the doors and you feel the energy bustling in here, right? The students, the joy.
Sarah Elizabeth:I think one of the primary reasons that we're feeling that kind of energy and joy is because the food is delicious. We have a baker who's baking their bread, right? And when you and when the students come in and to get, know, their their lunch, they see all of the fresh produce through those glass balls of of what's just harvested from the farm, right? You see the beautiful colors of those radishes and you you see the brightness of the strawberries and and so it's no wonder the students are feeling joyful and and and we've really intentionally created this space to cultivate a sense of community and joy and belonging, right? And so you'll see our educators sitting, you know, and eating with our students talking about mushroom club.
Aidan Descourouez:Yes, talking about mushroom club. We love it. And I think a really cool one that you mentioned there is community, right? I know we're not in the space, but you also have like a community store on-site here too, right? Where you take some of the things you grow and you can give that back to the community.
Aidan Descourouez:Can you tell us a little bit about that as well since we're right next door to it?
Sarah Elizabeth:Yeah, AGC is not just a school. Now we really built the six and a half acre campus as a sustainable community up with all of these different access points for community members to plug in. And so we have a fresh food marketplace called Little Leaf Market, where families and community members and neighbors can come and get access to fresh food. Yeah. Food coming from our farm, honey from our apiary, you know, cold pressed juices, you know, that are featuring carrots that were just harvested from our hoop houses.
Sarah Elizabeth:Yeah. We also have a community love fridge, a solar powered love fridge and food pantry that's accessible to our community, twenty four hours a day. We've got community gardens. We've got our wellness facilities. So there's, you know, all of these layers are teaching kitchens, you know, ways for people to plug into this kind of wellness ecosystem.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Awesome. Cool. I think at that point, it's time to go see this farm that we keep talking about.
Aidan Descourouez:I think we go for a little stroll outside. Sounds great. Let's do it. Now I'm sitting down here with Chris, the managing director of the Cultivate Collective. We're sitting in front of this beautiful farmland and this beautiful build out that you have here.
Aidan Descourouez:Can you tell us a little bit about your background? What brought you here? What brought you into the journey of really helping build this amazing program here?
Kris De la Torre:Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad to have you here. It's a beautiful spring day. We're in the full swing of the beginning of our first farm season on this six acre campus.
Aidan Descourouez:That's amazing.
Kris De la Torre:So my journey was really about food access and land stewardship. Okay. Many years ago, a little over twenty years ago, I started in restaurants and hospitality, and I was managing a restaurant in Brooklyn that was really hyper focused. It was like sort of at the beginning of like this Brooklyn made fad. And so we were bringing in a lot of produce and product from local farms.
Kris De la Torre:At the time, there was a very large hurricane that really devastated a lot of farmlands, particularly in low lying urban areas across New York City. And so I took my staff to help do some repairs on a farm that we'd been sourcing from. And actually, in sort of a full circle moment, it was a farm that was growing on a little under two acres Okay. On a high school campus in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. And I was so moved.
Kris De la Torre:Know, I visited the farm. I knew the farmer well. We were buying their products, but I just loved the work of it.
Aidan Descourouez:That kind of started the spark for you?
Kris De la Torre:Yeah, was just a really great experience and I thought, oh, I'll start volunteering here. And then I became their like on, you know, on-site farmers market manager and was like working with kids and adult apprentices to sell the things we were growing on-site to community members and also other restaurants.
Stacey Whitney:Yeah.
Kris De la Torre:And that was really the beginning of like a twenty year journey And I, I apprenticed on a variety of urban and rural farms around the country. I came back to the Midwest. I have really amazing community here in Chicago. Yeah. And so I joined Windy City Harvest, which is the workforce development side in urban ag of the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Kris De la Torre:And spent six years working with them, went to grad school for education because I was really like, man, there's something really powerful about a hands on experience outside, specifically using what we grow, turning it into what we eat, and then drawing on all the rich metaphors from that particular practice.
Aidan Descourouez:Oh, for sure.
Kris De la Torre:So coming out of that, a colleague from grad school told me about the Academy for Global Citizenship. It was really on the cusp of realizing this dream with a renewable energy campus, two acre farm, totally scratch based kitchen, space farm market, and I was really fortunate to join the team then. Yeah. We are, you know, six years later now from that moment, right? I seem to have worked in like six year sprints
Aidan Descourouez:like Hey, you know, that works, right?
Kris De la Torre:I'm right back actually on a farm on a school campus, you know? That's great.
Aidan Descourouez:Said this is season one officially your sign? So can you tell us what you're growing right now? What is this your look seasonally? Because I know like your menu also shifts seasonally based too. Can you tell us a little bit about what's growing right now?
Aidan Descourouez:What's gonna be harvested? Those sorts of things.
Kris De la Torre:You know, we have a couple different visions for what we grow and where it goes on campus.
Aidan Descourouez:Okay.
Kris De la Torre:The space that we are looking at is two acres of sustainable vegetable production. And this is really about volume and about accessibility to transform what we grow here. So a lot of salad grains, a lot of root vegetables, things that can be grown in large quantities and sent to the school cafeteria. So right now, you know, it's early spring, so we've got carrots, we've got lettuce, we've got radishes, we have some herbs growing. In alignment with the growing season, we'll shift to hot weather crops, so tomatoes, peppers, but really this space is about volume.
Kris De la Torre:Mhmm. Because we are feeding over 500 students
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Kris De la Torre:Roughly around a 100 staff members, two times a day plus a snack.
Aidan Descourouez:That is a lot.
Kris De la Torre:It's a lot. It's a lot. We'll just be growing about 10,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables out here.
Aidan Descourouez:That's incredible. What does the cycle from planting to harvesting look like? I know you get the kids involved a little bit too, right?
Kris De la Torre:Yes. So the cycle is really crop dependent, know, it's a little bit different. So right now we're growing out seedlings that will be transplanted and those are sort of mid season, late season crops. We get those in the ground. You know, we're in the Midwest, so it's a very particular growing zone that, necessitates us to get creative to, like, maximize the season that we have, right?
Kris De la Torre:Which is really, like, late March to like late October. These things are shifting a little bit with climate change, you know, but we're adapting with that. Student involvement in the production side of the farm, we really treat the production farm almost like a field trip space. So we are anticipating ritualizing things like the last, like garlic planting of the year, and we'll bring kids out. We had kids come out by classroom assignment to lay down sheet mulching as we were building out the second section of the farm.
Kris De la Torre:But because this is so production focused, we actually have a separate teaching and learning garden. And that's really where kids get their hands just on their another time. And then they can explore also cultural significance of the things they grow. It's a designated place for risk taking where this production farm is really about growing a lot of food.
Aidan Descourouez:What do you hope that the students are taking from, know, getting into the soil, getting to grow things? What is the biggest thing that you're hoping they take away from it?
Kris De la Torre:Well, you know, I would say, like many years ago, you kind of learned to let go of this idea that you're turning every kid into a gardener or a farmer. Really not about that. It's not even about every kid stepping off the farm and being, I'm a turnip convert. I love turnips. Yeah.
Kris De la Torre:You know? It's really about, one, on its most basic level, letting kids know that being outside is not a thing to be fearful of. Yeah. Especially in a dense urban center. Things like bugs or, you know, we we're moving into sort of a time where, you know, young people a lot of young people have the impression that, like, the outdoors are somehow dangerous.
Kris De la Torre:Yeah. Or, you know, and to some extent, caution makes sense. But really, for kids to just have a relationship with the natural world and understand their place as part of an ecosystem. Yeah. I think, like, at its baseline, that's a huge win.
Kris De la Torre:Also, kids for to appreciate and understand the origin of their food because sometime you know, eventually, not too long from now, all these young people will be consumers. Right? They will have buying power. And for them to make better decisions, more informed decisions for their health and well-being, but also to understand the relationship to the environmental impact of the origins of our food and how we spend our money. You know, I think that's something that through the farm, through the learning garden, is embodied.
Kris De la Torre:Gotcha. And that is a much better way to educate people than to try to rehabituate someone in their mid life. And then it's, you're not scolding, people are really drawing on their lived experience.
Aidan Descourouez:And obviously I know we're talking about even like learning and expanding this out to people into their midlife via these students. Have you seen these sorts of things with these students impact the broader community around you here and how have you seen that impact? Because I also know that you have community gardens here too, correct?
Kris De la Torre:Yes. Really the broader impact is how we think about again sort of this ecosystem ecosystem model or a food security safety net. So, you know, you have these couple of tiers. Right? It's like if you're growing food at home, that's like you know, that's a level of food sovereignty that's really important.
Bryan Soto:Yeah.
Kris De la Torre:And kids bring what they learn home.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Kris De la Torre:So a lot of students take seedlings that they grew for the farm or potted plants, you know, that they got excited about, and they start like a little home garden. Right? And that's step one. But we also have a ton of opportunities, not only for parents to work with their kids through Academy for Global Citizenship in these types of spaces, but Cultivate Collective is the very intentional community facing arm. So we managed the community garden.
Kris De la Torre:We had volunteer build out days on the farm. So there's a conversation going both ways about what the community wants and is missing. You know, how can an anchor institution like what we have here fill some of the gaps for people in food security? But also, know, kids are taking back hopefully really positive experiences and influencing their family, at least to get outside, if not just start a garden.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, okay. I guess the last piece that I kind of want to ask about is where do you see all of this going and growing? What excites you most? Because like you said, this is season one. Where do you expect this to go?
Aidan Descourouez:And what do you want to see come out of all of this?
Kris De la Torre:So where I hope to see all of this go, you know, is this maybe a funny answer,
Stacey Whitney:but I,
Kris De la Torre:to me, like, spaces where we grow food are also spaces of incredible beauty. And that, to me, is how you move people and connect people. So even this even this right now in our early sort of semi construction phase, it still feels very beautiful. But when this farm is at full capacity, when we're totally grown out, when we're, like, even the month of September, which is not too far from now crazy to think about, This place is going to be a place of abundance with tons of pollinators and birds and students running around. And, like, that is going to move people on the level that they do not forget.
Kris De la Torre:I mean, that's how I got into all of this work is I was so moved not only by the significance of the work, but truly how beautiful this space It
Aidan Descourouez:is truly moving. Mean, I remember the first time I came here on a tour and I was like, I have to come back so.
Kris De la Torre:And you haven't even seen it with like seven foot sunflowers you know grown out and We'll towering above
Aidan Descourouez:have to come back capture some of that too absolutely. I want to kind of talk about the sustainability and everything that you're building here. Why was building an on-site farm worth all of this effort? I don't imagine this is easy, but can you tell us a little bit about that?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, has been a dream for the last twenty years to someday not only be growing all of our own food on-site, but to be producing all of our energy and to be a net positive water campus. So, but food, as you know, is just so central to the mission. It's integrated into our education. It's integrated into what students are experiencing on their plates. And we also believe it's pretty incredible to have a model for this true kind of farm to school, you know, pathway, Where students are connecting on-site every day with growing food and really seeing firsthand kind of where their food is coming from.
Aidan Descourouez:I do want to pull one thing out of that. I do said that net water positive campus. Can you tell me what that means? I just I just personally don't know. Can you tell me what that means and what that looks like for you here?
Sarah Elizabeth:Yeah, well, are standing on the very first net positive energy and net positive water campus in the state of Illinois.
Aidan Descourouez:That's incredible.
Sarah Elizabeth:It's pretty cool.
Aidan Descourouez:That is super cool.
Sarah Elizabeth:So, you know, given that environmental sustainability is so central to what we're teaching our kids, feel like we've gotta live it.
Bryan Soto:Yeah.
Sarah Elizabeth:Right? We've gotta demonstrate, not just for our students, but for the world, what's possible, for for putting a stake in the ground around climate justice. And so here, we are producing 107% of our energy through through you can see, some of our solar panels here. Our entire roof. Right?
Sarah Elizabeth:We've got 550 kilowatts of photovoltaics. What you can't see is the 50 geothermal wells under the farm. Wow. And so a lot of really intentional design decisions dedicating over half the land of the six and a half acre site to food production and nature based learning and community gardens and orchards and apiaries and immersive kind of nature based learning and play experiences. Yeah, you know, learning and being outside is has such power to heal and such.
Sarah Elizabeth:It's such such an important part of our even adults, you know, our our brains. And so this is something that has been really intentional for us.
Aidan Descourouez:Yes. Can you share with me a farm moment that you've experienced that made you really realize, wow, this was so worth it?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, there's nothing quite like seeing even just our youngest students, A three year old or a five year old or even a 14 year old that's like, you know, hovering. Mean, they can't really kind of pull them away, right, from their learning garden where where they've been nurturing these plants. And then the day that they're harvesting these little baby tomatoes, even before they're totally ripe, right, because they're so excited. It's like, it's yellow. And and seeing them pop that into their mouth and, you know, sharing it with their friends, it's just like, you know, it's those beautiful moments where you see kids, you know, connecting with their food source in a totally different way, right?
Sarah Elizabeth:That's like you can't help but to imagine like how that one moment is going to ripple through the rest of their lives.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, and on that same note, want to ask, how do you explain what sustainability is to a seven year old, a six year old, a five year old, a three year old? How do you like translate that?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, we believe that it's so important that before we talk about kind of the big challenging things happening in the world as it relates to climate and as it relates to sustainability, that students first in their earliest years need to fall in love with nature and they need to fall in love with nature in their own sense of place. Right? It's it's it's great if they also love giraffes and, you know, and Yes. You know, they learn about those things too. Even more important, right, that the butterflies and the ladybugs and this you know, the things that they're finding here on campus, the caterpillars, like the sense of awe, going back to that sense of wonder.
Sarah Elizabeth:And that foundation is imperative, right? We first must have this connection and the empathy, right, before, you know, integrating in our in our later years, this sort of scaffolded environmental education path where students are learning about increasingly complex And and not in a way that scary, but in a way that that gives them again that sense of agency that I can do something about this. Yeah. I can make a difference.
Aidan Descourouez:One last question here for you on the subject. For, you know, schools that would be interested in a more sustainable thing, what is like one piece of advice that you could give other people who are running schools, other places? Like if somebody was really interested in doing this, where do they start?
Sarah Elizabeth:Come visit us.
Aidan Descourouez:Come visit us. That's great.
Sarah Elizabeth:You know, we actually, we have something here called our institute. So, know, as I mentioned, AGC is a school, AGC is a farm, we have a healthcare center, we have a fresh food marketplace, have this community hub of all of these expanded pathways. And one of those pathways is for other educators. So we often host these different professional developments and convenings and opportunities for people to come and experience what's happening and learn these tools that they can take back into their classrooms. So it starts with a single step.
Sarah Elizabeth:Right? This is this is a vision that's been achieved over the last, two decades. And as you can see, we're we're still in the process, right, of kinda growing and living that out. But there's so many ways that we can support others and taking a component of our model and integrating that into their classroom.
Aidan Descourouez:Super cool. Thank you so much. Yeah. If you had to describe AGC one sentence, how would you describe it?
Sarah Elizabeth:AGC is this hub that is filled with so much hope and audacity. Yeah. It's a place where anything is possible.
Aidan Descourouez:When you walk through the school today, what are the little moments that you see that still makes you pause?
Sarah Elizabeth:You know, I think it's those moments where you see a child in the wonder in their eyes, right? Where they're so curious. I think that natural inclination, it's those small moments. It's those small moments of seeing the wonder, the spark, the curiosity in a child's eyes. Know, AGC is a place where you'll see students skipping through the hallways, you see them running into the school in the morning.
Sarah Elizabeth:There's so much excitement and joy and a sense of belonging And so it brings me joy to see that kind of so vibrantly alive.
Aidan Descourouez:What are you most proud of about AGC that people might not always see?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, I'm proud of the way that after a couple of decades, there are now over 100 people here working who are reimagining education every day.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah.
Sarah Elizabeth:Who are taking kind of the roots of AGC and supporting those roots to sprout in communities across Chicago and around the world.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah. What's next Well, for
Sarah Elizabeth:as you can see from spending some time here in our six and a half acre campus, we have some big, big dreams for the future. And one of those dreams is to really expand our institute, which is the part of our work focused on supporting others and adopting these practices and scaling the methods and scaling the practices. So for example, with our food program, we just welcomed some officials from the FDA who are interested in looking at ways that we can kind of systemically on a national level be scaling these best practices in schools across the country.
Aidan Descourouez:That's great. If someone takes one thing away from this episode, what would it be?
Sarah Elizabeth:Well, if people are already not getting, you know, jumping on their bikes or on the bus, please come visit us. There are so many different ways for people to kind of plug in and experience what's happening here. And one of my favorite is actually that we host these delicious farm to table feasts. People can come for lunch, they can get a tour, but they can also meet our culinary director and they can get a taste of AGC. They can get a taste of what our students are actually getting to eat three times a day here at school fresh from our farm.
Aidan Descourouez:Yeah, that's incredible. Thank you so much for your hospitality, Sarah Elizabeth. This has been fantastic. I know I've left inspired and this isn't even my first visit here. So thank you so much for us.
Aidan Descourouez:I'm Aiden Descourouez and you've been listening to All In Good Taste.