What impact does nutrition have on learning?

Kevin: Stride K-12 is inviting students in grades K through 12 nationwide to enter the 2023 K-12 National Photography Competition. Students who enter will have the chance to win prize packages worth up to $1,200. To learn more about the competition, go to enrichment.k12.com, that’s enrichment.k12.com.

Stephen: But when you put a seed in a child’s hand, whether it’s a big kid or a little kid and I have veterans farms, I have disconnected youth farms, we have the first commercial greenhouse in America run by foster care youth, when you put a seed in a child’s hand, you’re making them a promise, and that seed, just like them, is going to grow into something great with a little love, a little care, and a little commitment.

Kevin: According to Feeding America, more than 9 million children in our country faced hunger in 2021. That’s one in eight children. Children facing hunger are more likely to repeat a grade in elementary school, have social and behavioral problems, and experience diminished language and motor skills.

What impact does nutrition have on learning? How can we encourage nutrition among our students and in our schools? And how can we improve access to healthy food for students and for families?

This is “What I Want to Know,” and today I’m joined by Stephen Ritz to find out. Stephen Ritz is an award-winning educator, author, and is the founder of Green Bronx Machine, a nonprofit that uses environmental education to strengthen communities. Stephen created the first edible classroom, and his curriculum is being used in hundreds of schools across the world. He joins us today to discuss the link between nutrition and learning. Stephen, welcome to the show.

Well, Stephen Ritz, welcome so much to “What I Want to Know.” Boy, I have been looking forward to this show. I admire your work and thank you so much for joining us today.

Stephen: Well, thank you for having me, and good morning from the South Bronx.

Kevin: Good morning. So I want to tell you I’ve become almost a Stephen Ritz groupie. I’ve been watching your videos, reading up on your work, read a little bit of your book, “The Power of the Plant,” and two things stand out. One is passion, and that passion you have for kids, all kids and, secondly, the belief in all kids. I think, as I’ve said on other programs, it’s in short supply when it comes to too many people in education that some really don’t believe all kids can do it. And I tell you what, there’s no doubt you do. I’ve got to go back and ask you, were you always drawn to education? How did you get into this space? Where did it all begin?

Stephen: So where did it all begin? It’s all the New York Knicks’ fault because they still haven’t drafted me. So let me be clear, Kevin, in the event James Dolan is watching, I’m available. But that said, nobody and I mean nobody rises to low expectations, and that’s what this game is all about. I would rather fail here than succeed here, and I’m an absolute accidental success. But I have a fundamental belief, one, that people should not have to leave their neighborhood to live, learn, and earn in a better one, and that showing up is very powerful. And that behind every successful person, there is a teacher, a mentor, a coach, someone who believed in them and said, “You can do it.” And, you know, it’s my goal to carry as many people and teachers and colleagues and communities on my shoulders as I can.

Kevin: You also, though, embody fun. I mean, just the way you’re presenting now, sometimes in the teaching profession, folks are focused on the pedagogy, their focused on the classroom structure, the manual, what they learn in ed school. You understand that stuff, but you also say, “Look, we’ve got to have fun.”

Stephen: I’m focused on all of that as well. Don’t let the cheese hat and the bowtie fool you. At the end of the day, this is all about data-driven instruction, being recursive, and how do we constantly move ourselves, our children, and our pedagogy to the proximal zone of development. But to be able to do what you love, in communities and for people who need it the most, and to be rewarded, that should be our common intention. That should be what gets us up and excites us in the morning. So you can best believe I’m having fun.

And this is not hard work. Coming to this country, trying to get through razor ribbon fence, that’s hard work. Being bused around the country because of politics, that’s hard work. But showing up and putting your best foot forward in service of kids in communities for a better, brighter future, that’s passion, baby. Let’s do it and let’s do it the best we can.

Kevin: You know, I was reading your book, “The Power of a Plant.” I was so struck by how you have now integrated in your instructional approach this idea of nutrition and learning and the value of it, and I want to talk about that. But first, let’s go over this story where you talked about a flower that sort of stopped a brawl and how you used that as a teaching tool. I think that’s such a cool story.

Stephen: Well, we were talking before about our common dear friend, Majora Carter, and I’m going to bring it full circle. I’ve had some tragedy in my life, as you’ve probably read in the book.

Kevin: Yes.

Stephen: And I hope that many people don’t have to go what I’ve gone through. But pain can bring you to a place where amazing things can happen.

So after the turn of the millennium, after losing a child, I wound up just taking a job in the closest school to my physical home, simply to save commute time, to circle the wagons around my family. I didn’t look at the school. I didn’t look at the data. I didn’t look at the job description. I needed a job. I had to take care of my family. I love teaching. I wanted to do it as close to home as possible. And I wound up in the worst high school in all of New York City.

Some context, 17% graduation rate, 256 felonies in a building, 48 school safety agents, and 18 armed police officers in a building. Let’s call that what it is. That’s not school, that’s prison. That’s a breeding ground for everything that is wrong. And remarkably, I was charged with teaching 17 young people out of jail science, with no science background mind you.

I had a great rapport with kids. My thing was literacy. My thing was math. My thing was entrepreneurship. It was about community engagement. But high school science? Who knew what the hell that was? You know? I had no idea. And I’ll never, ever forget sending a frantic email out to my colleagues on my trusty, dusty AOL account, “Help me. I’ve got 17 kids. I got to teach them science. What to do?” And the silence was deafening, deafening. Send me a microscope, send me a rocket ship, send me something. I just didn’t know what to do.

And remarkably, what I was able to do is build community with these young people. First and foremost, acknowledge who they were, accept them and say, “We’re going to get through this collectively.” And I believe that when kids are on your side and you’re on their side, that not only raises the ceiling but lifts the floor, so we’re starting at a higher ground.

Kevin: Yes.

Stephen: And literally one day I’m sitting in class and I get this announcement over the, you know, this 100 year old speaker, “Mr. Ritz, come to the principal’s office, please.” And the kids are like, “Aw, man, Mr. Ritz you got busted for being too nice. This is it. You’re in trouble now.”

And I go down to the principal’s office, and I’m marginally optimistic. You know, I didn’t think I did anything bad. I’m thinking, “What did I say today? Who did I not look at on the way into the building?” And I get in there and there’s this big box on the principal’s desk, and she’s like, “Mr. Ritz, you got this box.” And I’m like, “Wow, the internet works. Thank you, Al Gore. This is Christmas in the Bronx in November.” It actually was in October. And I’m so excited. I’m like, “Someone heard my plea.” And I rip open this box like a kid on Christmas. Just couldn’t wait to get in there right in front of the principal’s secretary.

And I open up this box, and there are these little things inside that look like onions. And I’m like, “WTF.” And in case your listeners don’t know, WTF does not stand for, “Wow, that’s fantastic.” I was like, “WTF. What is this?” And it turned out I had no idea what they were. So I was just like, “This is the worst. This is a joke. Someone, they’re giving me these things. There are onions. The kids are going to throw them at me.”

I walk out of the principal’s office with my head between my legs, like the most dejected dog in the world. I walk back into my classroom on my prep period. I take this box, I throw it behind a big radiator behind the window and literally forgot about it. Fast-forward about eight weeks later, there is a fight in class, and there are some kids who are really tough. And this skinny little kid makes a joke about a girl’s mother and hits her smack on in the face with a joke about her mother.

The class is rolling. The class, and I’m like, “Wow, this is bad.” And the girl gets up and she’s coming out of the seat and she’s ready to knock. And I’m like, “My career is over” in slow motion. And I’m running across the room just to put my body in between these two kids. All of a sudden, this skinny little boy reaches under the radiator and pulls up a handful of flowers and starts waving it in this girl’s face. And again, a WTF moment. And everybody in the class starts laughing. The girl is totally defused, and no one knew where these flowers came from.

And literally, that to me is, you know, that’s a teachable moment. Where did they come from? I’m just relieved no one got hurt. So we open up the box, and it turns out that these things called onions were really bulbs, daffodil bulbs, and they were sent to me by New Yorkers for Parks, inviting me and my students to come down and plant them in the very park that I used to date my wife and meet my wife in, you know, to smooch on this stuff on the bench with.

So my students and I, we got very excited about planting these bulbs. Turns out these young men and women and I wound up going on to plant 25,000 daffodil bulbs across New York City that year to commemorate 9/11. We were invited, believe it or not, to City Council because they thought we were the honors committee, and those young people actually went on to work with our dear colleague, Majora Carter, and put in the first green roof in all of New York City in of all places Hunts Point, and went on to become the foundation of Sustainable South Bronx.

But most importantly, those 17 young men and women, 100% of them graduated high school. And to this day, they are productive, and I’m still engaged and in touch with many of them, productive working people in and of this community, ho didn’t have to leave, who instead are helping to uplift where we live at ground zero.

Kevin: Kids don’t care what they know unless they know you care.

Stephen: How much you care. Exactly.

Kevin: And that teachable moment you talked about, as I said, when I read that, it struck me because all great teachers, Stephen, you know this, all great teachers use moments like that to sort of defuse situations or engage students. But you continued with that and this whole idea of really understanding the link between nature and nutrition and what’s going on in many of these kids’ worlds, because many of these kids don’t even, they haven’t been sort of socialized to stop and think about how this all relates. You figured out that this is a great way to keep kids engaged, but also develop something new in their thought process in terms of where they rank and where they stand in our world.

Stephen: Well, look, I always believe, you know, I am always in production mode. I am never in boss mode. I am always a learner. And when we got started, let me be clear, I knew nothing about plants. The four food groups to me were the clown, the king, the colonel, and Mrs. Freshly, and a 44-ounce soda. So it was my own odyssey through health and wellness that got me here.

But when we started, we were simply doing ornamental plants. But the one thing that we learned is that, in my community, hunger and now more than ever hunger is something that every child can relate to. Chronic disease, food shortages, these are things that in communities like mine, we know of daily. And when I learned that you could grow, instead of plants, food and that growing food is literally a license to print money, wow, that was game changing. And again, while I’m very much involved in the nonprofit sector, I believe that you can’t nonprofit yourself to prosperity.

And that was part, we could talk about that separately, but it was really Whole Foods that took our kids and, you know, let me bring 17 gang members into a Whole Foods, and the first one in Manhattan on the upper West side. And literally, security had a heart attack when we showed up. They weren’t used to seeing kids like us and kids that looked like mine, and they were very well behaved and wonderful. But that’s when we realized, wow, a lot of what these kids were going to jail for were other plant-based products in much smaller bags with not nearly the margin.

And when Whole Foods gave us the opportunity to sell food, that’s when we realized we were growing something greater. And then we started learning about urban ag. So we kind of went from ornamental plants and environmental remediation to growing food.

And then as I got to know these young people and work with them over years and get them jobs, you know, my own biology caught up with me. I was working like a madman, but I was eating what was in the community and I went from 200 pounds to 330. I became a diabetic. I mean, I was the big cheese, literally, with two slices of pizza and a 44-ounce soda in my hand every day. And it took me passing out in front of the school, 80 milligrams of Lipitor, an emergency room visit where I woke up clutching my BlackBerry and my daughter found me in front of her in school and snuck me out the back door because she was afraid the principal would get annoyed at me for getting sick on the job to really kind of have this health revolution.

But when you sit with kids and you ask them, you know, basically food is the language that we all speak, so with gang kids, the one thing that I like to do is, listen, we’re not going to accuse each other of anything. We’re going to sit and talk this through. Let’s have a slice of pizza. Let’s have this. And that’s how I became the big cheese. But kids really understand hunger. We have celebritized and honorized food in ways in communities like mine that have really marginalized their health. And kids are getting sicker. They’re getting fatter. The primary source, it’s just absurd what’s going on, and I haven’t met too many young people that really want to aspire to work behind the bulletproof window at McDonald’s. But yet everybody wants that 99 cent meal.

So, for us, there were so many pieces to it, and let me be clear, you know, the most important school supply in the world is food, because food justice is racial justice, and who has access to what, where, when, and how determines everything. And we are, by design or default, feeding a disease-based health crisis that is absurd.

And then the flip side is children will never be well read if they’re not well fed, particularly elementary school kids. I’m in a largely immigrant community right now, and to think their parents are paying $3 or $4 for a little 6 ounce container of Red Bull because it’s marketed to them with such sophistication that they think they’re doing their young kids a favor is absurd.

So reestablishing the connection with healthy food and healthy nutrition, you can’t perform in school if you’re poorly nourished or malnourished or hopped up on sugar. So for me, integrating food into school is perhaps the most humane, just, and planet-forward solution that we can come up with. And here in the South Bronx, I’m growing the next generation of plant-forward students and environmental and social justice advocates, you know.

And we opened up the new Wendy’s here. The kids were very upset. It was like the Taj Mahal of Wendy’s, you know, red, playground, and the lights. And our students read, my little fourth graders at Wendy’s refused to pay one penny more per pound for tomatoes, and they were really upset because those kids grow tomatoes in this classroom and they know how hard it is. So I’m like, “What are you going to do about it? You decided to boycott Wendy’s.” And every time I’m keeping a burger out of their belly and replacing it with a banana or a locally grown piece of produce or something from the fresh fruit and vegetable program right here in New York state, I’m saving their bellies, I’m saving their heart, I’m saving the planet. I’m really doing progressive stuff, and it’s really about growing justice here because there is no justice, just us.

Kevin: Yeah. And I tell you what, that’s all good stuff. And your creative, innovative, unique approaches continue to grow. Talk about the edible classroom, another cool concept.

Stephen: Yeah. We gave birth remarkably to the first Green Bronx Machine and, right at the turn of the millennium, gave birth to the first edible classroom in the entire United States. Imagine a classroom that was able to feed 450 kids at once in a school, which propelled us to fame. We actually put a replica of our classroom in the NBC Universal Store. We were featured on NBC. But, you know, fast-forward making it scalable and replicable through the use of Tower Garden technology. Look, I go from a box to a garden, in 45 minutes if you’re a man, in 15 minutes, if you are a woman, because you’ll read the directions and watch the video. But every single thing I’ve been able to do here has not required a building permit, no construction. The only thing I’ve had is a parking permit and a good key to a classroom. That’s the kind of scalable innovation that we need. And it puts it right in front of kids, and that’s the most important thing. And it makes it easy for teachers. It’s just the art and science of growing vegetables aligned to everything we need to do in school.

But when you put a seed in a child’s hand, whether it’s a big kid or a little kid and I have veterans farms, I have disconnected youth farms, we have the first commercial greenhouse in America run by foster care youth, when you put a seed in a child’s hand, you’re making them a promise, and that seed, just like them, is going to grow into something great with a little love, a little care, and a little commitment. And on the entrepreneurial side, let me be clear, Kevin, if I give you a penny and tell you that penny is going to be worth a $5 bill in 30 days if you show up and take good care of it, wow, that goes to scale with some of my entrepreneurial kids really well.

And, of course, I want to take a moment to shout out my dear friends at Gotham Greens for giving me the capacity to think about this today. Gotham Greens is leading the nation in adaptive reuse of unusable space, roofs and brownfields to grow food using 90% less water, hyper-local, hyper nutritious. They’ve hired my students. Whole Kids has hired my students. So I really want to applaud them because that’s a mindset where together we can all prosper. Don’t talk to me about education if you’re not talking to me about opportunity. And the green space, the save our planet space and the forward thinking space of casual food and hospitality has the ability to embrace our young people and usually the most disconnected young people in the most meaningful, quintuple bottom lines way, people, planet, progress, profit, and purpose, and that’s what this work is all about.

Kevin: You know what’s interesting, Stephen, I’ve visited hundreds and hundreds of schools around the world, and I’ve often been surprised that there are a good number of schools that are taking similar approaches as you are. And when I talk to superintendents and school leaders, one of the barriers they have is sort of this locked-in mindset around what food at school is supposed to look like.

And this sort of dovetails into the politics. Talk about the school lunch program, because for many kids, the best meal, frankly sometimes the only meal they get will be that school lunch meal, and I’ve seen and witnessed horror stories where the food is moldy. Some of the school lunch providers, they really aren’t providing nutritious meals.

So a couple questions. One, how can we change that, and two, how can we make sure that there’s universality when it comes to the food that children receive in school, because many of them are really relying on this?

Stephen: Well, to your point, first and foremost, many children, including mine here in school, rely on public school for their primary source of healthy nutrition. I want to be very clear to shout out our Mayor, Eric Adams, and also our Chancellor, David Banks, who have put food literally on the education menu. We just debuted, well, they just debuted the first food education roadmap in the nation that really highlights the value of food and educating children about food to make healthy food choices.

So this is the perfect intersectionality, if you will. Listen, so much of our healthcare crisis is directly related to food.

Kevin: Yes.

Stephen: So when kids understand what food is, where it comes from, how to grow it, and then you engage them with it at a young age, you know, I’m building ambassadors, which is great. Listen, I could stand on the front line of the school cafeteria and tell the kids, “Hey, would you like to try quinoa,” and they look at me like, “Mr. Ritz, you’re nuts.” But when I have my little second and third graders down there talking about it and sharing some of the things they’ve grown in the classroom and putting it on the line and say, “Would you like to try this today?” Guess what? They get excited. And I’ve got kids coming to school dressed as carrots and peas, and we’re spreading hummus and goodness across the food, across the neighborhood. I always say let good food be hood food and hood food be good food.

And then when you make it culturally relevant, OMG. I’ve got grandparents coming in. This has been a revolution for us. So I want to shout out, again, Mayor Adams, Chancellor David C. Banks, and also our good friends at Google, because when you look at how you can use information and access to have the first choice be the healthiest choice and make that not such good choice, two or three steps down the line simply by designing it, wow.

But let me be clear. We need to support kids, and we need to support local food and healthy food in school. It’s the most important thing we could do is to nourish our young people’s minds and bodies and now more than ever. Look, we just came through COVID. Kids have eaten so much processed food. And if you’ve been in the education world as long as I have, you’re seeing kids go through puberty at younger and younger ages. I’m in my fourth decade of public school access. And listen, we always had some kids, even when I was in high school, who developed earlier, but we’re seeing puberty in second and third grade. And that’s largely due to food, too much sugar, too much hormones, too much environmental stress.

The science of food is evolving faster than our bodies can accept it. And it really takes a toll on these young kids, and that’s childhood lost. That’s death and disease by diet. And as Mayor Adams likes to say, it is no longer birthplace, it’s breakfast. It’s no longer lineage, it is lunch. And it is no longer DNA, it is dinner. And food unlocks all of that genetic messaging inside of our bodies, so we want to fuel our bodies for success instead of disease and chronic disorder.

Kevin: Let me ask you about what a superintendent or a school leader, a teacher, and this is what I really want to know. Many of them will listen to this program, and they’ll say, “Well, the bureaucracy, the leadership, this is hard. It sounds good.” How would an enterprising school teacher or school leader get started to change the dynamic of their neighborhood? What recommendations would you give them?

Stephen: That’s a great question. I always say you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start in order to be great. And no one can do everything, but everyone can do something. So, you know, my commitment to the world was literally to come up with a curriculum that democratized information and access for teachers. And I started this program with 17 kids in one classroom. Today we are touching 275,000 students and thousands of teachers around the world with the Green Bronx Machine curriculum. And this is unlimited access, unlimited professional development, unlimited site license, no annual fees, no tiered subscriptions. The kind of disruption that gives access and democracy in communities that need it most.

So I’m super proud of the work. The curriculum, it’s right here. The State University of New York uses it to train teachers, and I got lucky. I was interested in food, I was interested in plants, and I just really took authentic project-based learning, put it in the heart of a classroom, and wrapped whole school performance and metrics around it.

Today our number one client are principals and superintendents from around the country who are looking for pedagogy and who are looking for professional development, who are looking for support and data-driven instruction. You know, literally with Google, we’ve been able to bake metrics into the classroom so we can give you real-time feedback. I don’t want to wait till the end of the year to tell you how kids are doing, I want that information aggregated in real time. And at least today we are in a far better place with internet access than we were three or four years ago. We are working hard, I think, and I want to, again, congratulate mayors and superintendents for really working to democratize digital access. The response to the tragic pandemic was nothing less than heroic in terms of really moving children and communities like mine into the 21st century. So I’m excited about that.

Kevin: Well, Stephen Ritz, let me tell you something. You’re doing amazing work. Continue to do the work. For those that are listening, the Green Bronx Machine, their curriculum is amazing. It’s something that any school leader in the country should be able to use. And I want to thank you so much, not just for what you’re doing, but more importantly right now for joining us on “What I Want to Know.”

Stephen: And Kevin, I want to thank you. We need more people like you and more people championing. I don’t consider myself an underdog anymore. What I believe is that from our respective humble corners of the globe, we collectively have the capacity to change the world.

Kevin: Hear, hear.

Stephen: And so thank you for uplifting the profession and thank you for uplifting my community. It’s always easy to go to Harvard and the grade schools, but not too many people want to come to the hood, but this is where it matters most.

Kevin: Well, the hood is the future. Thank you for showcasing that.

Stephen: Absolutely. Now more than ever, and we could have a whole separate conversation about that. But remember this, each and every day you vote with your fork, you vote with your mouth, you vote with your wallet. And the degree to which we resist any injustice is the degree to which we are all free, my friend.

Kevin: Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to “What I Want to Know.” Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, so you can explore other episodes and dive into our discussions on the future of education. And write a review of the show. I also encourage you to join the conversation and let me know what you want to know using #WIWTK on social media. That’s #WIWTK.

For more information on Stride and online education, visit stridelearning.com. I’m your host, Kevin P. Chavous. Thank you for joining “What I Want to Know.”