Welcome to Down Home, San Luis Obispo Classical Academy’s blog! We are a classical school offering several options to make our education work for families with infants through high schoolers. Our signature hybrid program, which is part-time classroom and part-time home instruction, provides an engaging education for preschool through middle school (with full time options available). We also have a university model high school. This blog is meant to support and encourage on the home front because, in so many ways, the heart of what happens at SLO Classical Academy happens down home.

Semper discentes—always learning together.

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Wednesday Wonders: Fun with Food in High School

{photo by Carolyn Eicher}

Semester 2 for our high school students began this week, and with it a new round of elective class offerings. But today we want to highlight one of the exciting electives our students had the option to take last semester. Paige Bartel taught the class, and here she shares with us a little about it and a few of their outings, to give you a sense of just one of the great things happening up at our high school:

I have a passion for food and farming, and so I was asked to teach an elective class this year called “Food: The Art, Science, and History of What We Eat.” This course focused on what many of us take for granted: the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of food. My hope was to get the students to reflect on how food shapes our lives as individuals and as communities through a variety of disciplinary lenses – ecology, economics, nutritional science, history, ethics, politics, and aesthetics.

To that end, the students were given an assortment of experiences – we kept a school garden, did some cooking lessons (vegetable caramelization, chocolate making, and working with sourdough), read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, volunteered with GleanSLO where we picked Brussels sprouts and onions at First Fruits Farm, visited a goat farm and working creamery, and culminated with a diverse cheese tasting paired with student-made sourdough crackers.

Here are several more photos from the field trips to the farm and creamery. Looks like they had beautiful weather and rewarding experiences! At the end, you'll find a couple of photos taken during one of their classes as well. Doesn’t this make you wish you were in high school and could take this elective? Thank you, Mrs. Bartel! And thank you to Carolyn Eicher, for taking photos at the farm: