New School of Thought - Melissa Roderick teaches vegetarian cooking to students at Washington Heights school in New York City - Brief Article

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 1999 by Lambeth Hochwald

The last thing you expect the seventh graders sitting behind barred windows at Intermediate School 143 in New York City's rough inner-city to be learning are the fine points of veganism, let alone how to make scrambled tofu. But that's exactly what's happening in their mandatory Home and Careers class--a home-ec course with a late-'90s spin. And if Melissa Roderick, their 27-year-old hemp-bag-toting teacher, has her way, the boys and girls at IS 143 will never learn how to make a meat loaf.

Roderick came to the Washington Heights school three years ago through Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits college graduates and places them in schools with chronic teacher shortages. She was assigned the Home and Careers course, populated mostly by students who hail from the Dominican Republic or Ecuador and who live at or below the poverty line. When Roderick learned that the class included cooking, she knew she had a confession to make.

"I don't know how to cook meat," the dedicated vegetarian told her prospective employer. "There was no way I could or would include preparing meat." But principal Phyllis Williams didn't have a problem with that. "Our home-ec rooms were going to waste before Melissa arrived," says Williams. "I knew her point of view would be important for the kids, many of whom don't have a clue how healthy vegetables are."

That first year, Williams gave Roderick a $20 weekly food allowance, a classroom with two ovens and virtually no syllabus on which to base her lessons. Once Roderick procured the basics, like bowls, spoons and spatulas (many of which came from her own kitchen), she began sketching out classes that included units on health issues, consumer awareness and, of course, vegetarian cooking.

Today, three years later, Roderick's writing is all over the walls, literally, with posters for The Great American Meatout and photos of such celebrity vegetarians as Drew Barrymore and David Duchovny decorating the otherwise bleak classroom. And apparently Roderick is making headway. At the end of the last school year, she "quizzed" students on why people choose to be vegetarians. "Some people don't want animals to be killed," said one eager student. "They want to reduce their risk of heart disease," replied another. Sure these sound like obvious answers--until you realize that nine months earlier, these kids thought tofu was a fish.

Roderick herself gave up burgers and milk shakes for tofu and soy milk when she was 15, just a few years older than the students she now teaches. "I became a vegetarian after I read about factory farming and how animals were treated before being slaughtered," she says. "My passion in life is to teach everyone I can about vegetarianism. But I've changed how I do that. I used to be preachy. I've learned that's not the right way to do things. Now I do it by example. I'll make a potluck dinner and invite people to share in my vegetarian cooking."

Her students have turned out to be her best audience. Most had never analyzed or shown an interest in their diets before taking Roderick's course. "We did a four-day dietary assessment and learned their eating habits were pretty poor," she says. "They ate tons of junk food, and there wasn't a lot of variety. They ate chicken, beans and plantains but few vegetables."

Yet instead of judging her students' diets, she encouraged them to expand their food choices and keep a journal to track what they're eating. "Then we looked at the Food Guide Pyramid to see if they were getting enough variety," she says. "My goal is not to convert them to vegetarianism. It's to point out that there are a lot of good foods out there and they should be open to them."

The most rewarding part, says Roderick, are the days when students tell her they've tried out a recipe they learned in class. "I've had kids bring in corn dolce or rice pudding that they made with their mothers. One student even asked for recipes so she could cook for an aunt who is vegetarian."

Even if she doesn't convert the masses, Roderick takes pride in knowing that she's taught her students what tofu is and that you don't have to be a strict vegetarian to enjoy fruits and vegetables. "The first thing we cooked was pumpkin bread, and the kids thought it was `gross' because the puree was mushy," she says. "But once they tried it, they all wanted to make it at home. Now they come in every week wondering what they're going to cook next."