Winter/Spring 2007, Volume 11 Number 3

Table of Contents

What does it feel like to be hungry? How can I share with someone who doesn’t have enough? The most simplified aspects of hunger and sharing have been put in a curriculum for children who are just learning to understand their own hunger. The children at Rivendell Preschool, a Montessori inclusion school in Brooklyn, NY, are learning to share with and care about others through “service-learning,” an aspect of the curriculum intended to foster spiritual development and compassion in children.

For the third year running, Rivendell Preschool students are participating in preparing lunches for the clients of Christian Help In Park Slope (C.H.I.P.S.), a local soup kitchen. (C.H.I.P.S. is the subject of the book Uncle Willy & the Soup Kitchen by Dyanne DiSalvo-Ryan.) This is an opportunity for the children, who range from 18 months to 6 years, to contribute to the broader community while learning about themselves.

In recent years, many schools have been making community service a standard part of their curricula. That said, it is somewhat rare for sustained community service to appear at the preschool level. The educators at Rivendell feel a moral obligation to encourage caring for others and the knowledge that people may live differently.

“This may be consciousness-raising for some of the parents too,” comments Linda Schick, a long-time teacher at the school and currently its educational director. While the curriculum did not set out to guide whole families regarding hunger and poverty in this increasingly more affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn, the fact that these are young children makes the effect almost inevitable. “The parents are partners in this endeavor. They are in the outside world,” points out Lissy Vomacka, a teacher.

As adults, we are often aware of the grim details of hunger, and our very human response is to recoil in fear, avert our eyes, feel guilty and take out our cheque books. The Rivendell curriculum requires that families set aside the fear and look at the hunger and poverty in the immediate community. Theresa Salvanti, a teacher, reflected that “the curriculum that extends from C.H.I.P.S. has increased the children’s awareness of what it means to be hungry, and that all people are hungry at one time or other. It has also increased my own awareness of social issues in the Park Slope community.”

Once a month, the 18 months - 2.6 year-olds bring oranges and apples to school. They place them in a large bowl in the middle of their classroom, count fruit, and discuss the words “a lot,” “enough,” “plenty” and “sharing.” They talk about feeling hungry and eat a little of the fruit. Then they share their plenty with older friends in other classes, and the remainder goes to the food collection for C.H.I.P.S. lunches.

Children 2.6 - 6 years contribute a range of foods to the lunches: mustard, lunch meat, cheese slices, bread, apples, oranges, and crackers.  Last year, they also made a different blend of applesauce each month. They ate some and prepared the rest for C.H.I.P.S..

On a typical C.H.I.P.S. work day, each child brings his or her offering. The children often count the items as they arrive and sometimes tally the results. Then, while one group decorates lunch bags, another group makes sandwiches, and a third assembles the bag lunches. Parent volunteers supervise the work and deliver the lunches to C.H.I.P.S. for distribution to needy clients.

While it has not been possible for the school children to visit C.H.I.P.S., one of the teachers was invited to C.H.I.P.S. to take photographs of all the activities. The photos have been made into a book that carefully illustrates what happens to the lunches once they leave the school.

For many years, Rivendell did a Thanksgiving canned food drive for C.H.I.P.S., but without much follow through for the children. So, as a natural extension of this existing relationship, the children learned more about C.H.I.P.S. in the final stage of a Heifer fundraising project that was organized by a couple of parents. With a little of the money raised, the class bought enough supplies to make fifty sandwiches. By the next fall, the lunch making had evolved into a regular, monthly aspect of the curriculum. The C.H.I.P.S curriculum continues to evolve as teachers and parents work together to make it ever more meaningful and successful for all involved.

How much do the children understand about hunger and poverty from the Rivendell curriculum? It is hard to measure, but when asked what they thought about the work they were doing, this is how some children responded:

“The people who eat the sandwiches don’t have any money to buy food.”

“I like making sandwiches and packing bags. I think about the people who will eat the food.”

            Caroline Batzdorf is a mother of three young children in Brooklyn, NY, and part-time public policy      researcher.  She may be contacted at clbatzdorf@earthlink.net

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