Teenagers Like to Grow and Eat Good Food, Too: An Interview with Jorge
November 9th, 2009 By Victoria Tatum
One morning I came out of our house just as Jorge, a young man I knew, shuffled by in baggy pants. He was pouring a bag of Skittles into his mouth.
“Jorge!” I said. “Is that your breakfast?”
He nodded sheepishly. I lived on a busy street where from time to time I ran into Jorge, who had attended elementary school with my daughter, Carly, down the block. That campus housed a number of smaller schools, including Costanoa, a district-run program for students who had fallen behind at the bigger high schools. The morning of his Skittle breakfast, Jorge was a sophomore at Costanoa.
Some months later I ran into his mom. She lived with her family in the apartments down the hill from our house, and over the years I had talked with her often as she walked by with Jorge’s younger siblings.
“How’s Jorge?” I asked.
“He’s doing well,” she said in Spanish. “He’s working in the ROP garden at school, and he loves it so much he wants to apply to the horticulture program at Cabrillo [College].” When Costanoa moved to our campus, they had expanded the Life Lab garden halfway across the playing field. Students on campus labored in the garden and cooked from the bounty. Read More