Slide outline for Lesson 6.4. Twelve slides, one day. Slide 2 is read out loud word for word and is not skipped. The last slide carries the counselor's name and room. [Sal: no photos of real neighborhoods, and no photos that could be read as a picture of somebody's family. Diagrams and the map only.]
Food Scarcity and Food Deserts
- Unit 6, Lesson 6.4
- Topic 6.1 Where Food Comes From
- Today: one neighborhood on paper, two price lists, twenty dollars
Teacher notes
Image: a plain line drawing of a street grid with one store icon at the far corner.
Three rules for today
- Nobody is asked about their own household. Not your fridge, not your groceries, not anything
- This is not something that happens only somewhere else. About one in eight households in this country has trouble affording enough food in a given year
- We are here to solve a problem, not to feel sorry for anybody
Teacher notes
Read all three out loud, word for word. Do not paraphrase and do not skip. The lesson only works if the room knows it is safe.
Do now
- The words "food desert" describe some neighborhoods
- From the words alone, what do you think it means?
- One sentence. There is no wrong guess here
Teacher notes
Take four guesses and correct none of them. Most will say "a place with no food." That guess is the opening of the lesson.
There is plenty of food for sale here
- A store on almost every corner
- Open late, open early, some open all night
- And it is still hard to put a decent dinner on the table
- Your job: figure out why
Teacher notes
This is the hook.
Two words
- Food insecurity: not having reliable access to enough affordable food
- Food desert: a neighborhood where reaching a full grocery store is hard because of distance, transportation, or both
Teacher notes
Students write both in their own words. Watch for "a place with no food" on the handout and fix it now, not later.
Four things that create one
- Distance: how far the nearest full grocery store is
- Transportation: whether you can get there and back with groceries
- Price: what the nearby stores charge
- Selection: what the nearby stores actually stock
Teacher notes
Image: four icons, a ruler, a bus, a price tag, an empty shelf.
Maple Park
- 4,000 people, twelve blocks
- One supermarket, three convenience stores
- One bus, once an hour
- No sidewalk on Route 9 between Elm and the store
Teacher notes
Image: the neighborhood map from the handout, projected large, with the scale bar visible.
Made up for class. Say that out loud.
Measure it
- Three homes, six distances
- 1 inch equals 0.4 miles. One block is about 0.1 miles
- Highlight the walk from Home C to the supermarket
- Then: who has the hardest trip, and what would make it easier?
Teacher notes
The fix has to be a change to the neighborhood, not to the family. If a student says "they should get a car," that is the discussion, not the answer.
Twenty dollars, two stores
- Build a dinner for a family of four
- First at the supermarket, then at the corner store
- Both carts have to feed four people
- Then: what is the difference, in dollars and in food?
Teacher notes
Circulate. Any cart with fresh vegetables from the corner store gets sent back to the price list, not corrected out loud.
The item that is not on the list at all
- No fresh vegetables
- No fresh meat
- One banana, ninety-nine cents
Teacher notes
This is the slide students remember. It is not only that the corner store is expensive. It is that some food is not for sale there at any price.
Five responses
- Food pantry: free groceries, often one day a week
- SNAP and WIC: federal programs, run through the state
- Community garden: neighbors grow food on a shared plot
- Mobile market: a truck that parks in the neighborhood on a schedule
- School meals: breakfast and lunch, at no charge in many New York schools
Teacher notes
One minute each, factual. What each one is, who runs it, what it does and does not solve. Then: which two would help Maple Park most, and why.
Exit card, and my door
- A food desert is ___
- The thing that would help most is ___ because ___
- If anything today is about your house, my door and the counselor's door are both open, and you do not have to explain
Teacher notes
[Sal: put the counselor's name and room number on this slide.] Read the last line out loud. Read the exit cards before you hand anything back.