Giving Compass' Take:

• Hillary Bonhomme and Jessica Fu share how one school is using food as an entry point to other subjects including immigration and mental health. 

• What are the advantages of using food as an entry point? 

• Learn about undocumented workers in the agricultural industry. 

You’d be remiss if you called this a cooking class.

Students wash their hands as instructors pass out cutting boards, knives, and ingredients for today’s lesson in food and culture, one segment of teacher Andrew Margon’s year-long food education course, at the High School for Environmental Studies in New York City.

At the front of the classroom, Chef Carolina Mendez from La Morada, a Oaxacan restaurant in the Bronx, heats up a tortilla in a pan. It’ll serve as the base for tlayudas, a sort of traditional Mexican pizza, which Mendez has come to teach the students to cook.

But while food makes an obviously enticing centerpiece for this class’s curricula, taught in partnership with the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, it’s only about half an hour before the tlayudas take a back seat to the real lesson: a robust discussion about migration, heritage, and life as a chef.

The students sit attentively, asking questions about how the sisters’ life stories became intertwined with restaurant ownership, and wondering how their own interests might help them to make a living as cooks or restaurateurs someday. One student raises a hand. “I’m starting to think about college,” she says. “I feel like I have two interests that don’t go together, psychology and cooking. What advice would you give to me?”

“Those things do go together,” Carolina says. “Imagine needing to treat a patient with PTSD from crossing the border. Imagine being able to help that person cook food from their hometown. Imagine what type of comfort you could bring by helping them prepare something that reminds them of home.”

Read the full article about food, immigration, and mental health by Hillary Bonhomme and Jessica Fu at The New Food Economy.