Nature-Inspired Solutions to Disease Problems

Introduction

It should not require much justification to propose to educate students about the causes and potential solutions to some of the many environmental issues that threaten the future of our world. “In the twenty-first century, we face scarcity in critical resources, the degradation of ecosystem services, and the erosion of the planet’s capability to absorb our wastes”¹

How we humans grow, process and transport food; clothe and house ourselves; heat and cool our homes and businesses; manage our water; and dispose of waste all contribute to the current crisis level of degradation of our planet. 

“We are the first generation with widespread knowledge of how our activities influence the Earth System, and thus the first generation with the power and the responsibility to change our relationship with the planet. Responsible stewardship entails emulating nature in terms of resource use and waste transformation and recycling, and the transformation of agricultural, energy and transport systems”²

While there may not be consensus on what the optimal path forward to mitigate damage done, nor how to draw down excess carbon that is in circulation, there are no shortages of potential solutions and big ideas worth trying.  Many of these potential solutions are inspired by natural systems and processes. There is hope that the health of our ecosystems, our species, and even our political systems may be supported and nurtured by innovative ideas gleaned from animals, plants, ecosystem interactions, and indigenous human cultural practices and teachings.

The U School offers ninth through twelfth graders a competency-based high school model that requires young people to demonstrate their learning through tangible performance tasks and attempts to be transparent with expectations of competency completion through a portfolio model.  Teachers are empowered to determine the required portfolio expectations for each class, and to offer numerous opportunities for independent and self-directed learning.  The U School Urban Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (AFNR) Career and Technical Education (CTE) program is a unique one-year program for our high school seniors. This program combines traditional expectations of the CTE model within the specific context of urban Philadelphia.  We are located in the heart of North Philadelphia, in a building designed for elementary school.  The campus has a parking lot as our only open space.  There are no fields, no grass, no trees.  Our staff works together to try to engage and empower young people with challenging and scaffolded learning experiences - in the classroom, school based ag and food “labs,” field trips, campus & neighborhood greening projects, internships and other real world learning opportunities towards deep and meaningful engagement in big issues and opportunities to explore green collar career pathways.  This program does not yet have a set curriculum, but rather has a list of skills and tasks the students are meant to complete.  It has been my goal, as the founding teacher for this program, to turn this list into a set of units which are relevant and engaging, and that can offer service and other real world learning opportunities for students inside and outside of the classroom.  It is also my hope that students have the agency to co-create lessons and help to focus the priorities of our shared time together to meet their individual and collective needs as they complete high school and consider their places in the wider community.

My students and I designed and are building an ever-expanding urban farm on a portion of the paved parking lot.   In the last three years we have built, filled and planted 20 large raised beds. This spring we de-paved another portion of this lot and planted deep rooted native plants for a new pollinator meadow and expanded our food growing spaces.  AFNR staff and students started a food resource room in what was once the school’s main office, which provides local organic fresh food boxes, frozen prepared meals, sustainable pantry staples to students, staff and community members who might find themselves food insecure or living in a food desert.  These initiatives offer students hands-on experiences with components of the food and agriculture system including:  growing, harvesting, processing, inventory management, and preparation. These activities have now become part of what we do at school.  That said, there are many opportunities that have yet to be realized for students to connect this work to personal health, environmental health and the larger food system.

Despite access to fresh locally grown ingredients from our food farm and food resource room, a significant number of our students get most of their daily calories from processed food.  This is evidenced by the bags and wrappers that can be audited in every classroom, and a cursory analysis of food served in the cafeteria. 

Many U School students come from the surrounding North Philadelphia neighborhood. According to the demographic information provided by the Philadelphia School District, our student population is 76%, Black/African American, 18% Hispanic/Latinx and 100% economically disadvantaged. ³ The U School, like all Philadelphia public schools, has a high concentration of students and their families living in historically disinvested neighborhoods, navigating food insecurity, and the other factors that contribute to the social determinants of health, or in this case the social determinants of illness.  These six areas which shape a person’s health (Figure 1) include three areas - Education, Neighborhood and Built Environment, Social & Community which fit within the scope of the AFNR program, and so are topics to address in our curriculum planning.

Figure 1 A Constellation of Social and Environmental Factors Which Are Understood to Influence Health and Wellness

In this unit will begin to explore how food choices made in “nature” by people and by animals are influenced by seasonality, cycles of scarcity, and evolution.  Students will read about how animals are trending towards obesity living in modern industrial societies, and how zookeepers manage overweight bears.  As students begin to unearth the connection between the few global food brands that dominate the market and the government subsidies which have influenced their food choices and undermined their health outcomes, I hope this influences their relationship with food in a positive way, and perhaps sparks outrage and action.  This is an equity issue, as “nearly 70% of youth in North Philadelphia, the majority of whom are black or Hispanic, are overweight or obese, which is nearly double the obesity and overweight rate for youth in the United States”⁴ 

My goal with this unit is to explicitly connect many of the discrete skills and tasks into a context that allows students to deepen an understanding of the interconnection between food production, environmental health and human health within the context of our school campus and North Philadelphia neighborhood.  Our AFNR team plays a role in the agriculture system as producers, food distributors, and consumers. The choices about how we do this work has social, health and environmental impacts. By naming and contextualizing the connections between our approach as growers of chemical free, nutrient dense food, purchasers of local organic produce, builders of soil health and stewards of pollinators and trees, we can celebrate our participation in a resilient health supportive food system. This has potential impact on students’ lives individually, as they make food choices for themselves; and on society as we grow consumers, policy makers, public health works and maybe even farmers of the future.

Michael Pollen, author of the influential 2006 The Omnivore’s Dilemma, A Natural History of Food in Four Meals, spends 450 pages investigating how various food choices impact animal welfare and the environment.  The dilemma to which the title refers is essentially- how can we choose what to eat if we don’t understand how food is produced, and what impacts one’s choice might have. He set out to educate a nation, and after selling 2 million copies, he created a young readers edition subtitled The Secrets Behind What You Eat.  His claim in the preface of this edition is that he “didn’t write The Omnivore’s Dilemma to convince you to eat one kind of food or another. [His] aim was to give you the information you need to make good choices.  He continues…Our food choices are some of the most important choices we get to make in life.  The way we eat has a bigger effect on our health and that of the planet than any other activity.” ⁵ 

This unit will provide our CTE students an opportunity to read the Omnivore’s Dilemma Young Readers Edition, to engage with the ideas and information it reveals, and to demonstrate competency in a wide range of specific skills and tasks that they must cover to complete their AFNR portfolio, while also trying to inspire students to embrace alternative methods of food production and processing and improve personal and community health outcomes.