Grade 6 Students Explore Their Heritage and Enjoy a Feast in Interdisciplinary Unit

St. Margaret’s grade 6 students enjoyed a multicultural feast like never before this week, the culmination of a unit that explored each student’s family traditions and histories. 

The Heritage Cookbook project was an interdisciplinary unit between grade 6 world history, taught by Rian Otto, and grade 6 writing, taught by Owen Beitner. While the long tables of food in the Middle School courtyard were the most noticeable (and most delicious) part of the unit, it was just one of many activities students did to not only learn more about where they came from, but also to celebrate and experience a part of everyone’s unique story. 

In Mr. Beitner’s writing class, students interviewed a family member to learn more about the student as a child and the family heritage. They did two writing pieces from these conversations—an identity piece that answered “who am I?” and a recipe piece sharing the story about a family recipe and its origins. 

“We spent time in class identifying what we see in our life, what we touch often in our life, what we taste with beloved recipes, what smells accompany our life, and finally, what we hear,” Mr. Beitner said. “Students focused on these senses to write rich details about themselves, and they did a great job."

In Mrs. Otto’s world history class, students drew a map of their country of origin and created presentation slides on their heritage. They then presented their slides in class, with Mr. Beitner’s writing classes also attending the presentations.

This week, the unit culminated with all of grade 6 attending a presentation with five students—Dorothy Chen, Yumi Yeh, Sahana Shah, Angelo Valaskantjis and Harper Langfeldt—sharing their family stories in McGregor Family Theater. Also sharing their story was Upper School senior Luciana Varkevisser, who is part of the Tartan Inclusivity and Diversity Education (TIDE) student leadership group 

Next? It was time to eat. With more than 55 St. Margaret’s parents in attendance to help serve food, students were able to try favorite dishes from their classmates’ families, with recipes from places like the Philippines, Germany, France, Iran, Guatemala, India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Russia, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom and Mexico. 

The family recipes will be compiled into a Heritage Cookbook which will be shared with the Middle School community. In addition to compiling recipes and telling the stories behind them, students also created artwork for the cookbook and studied the book Hungry Planet to learn more about what families around the world eat in a typical week. 

Mrs. Otto and Mr. Beitner started the interdisciplinary project around family heritage and food back in 2017, and it's proven to be a popular community-building unit for students to learn more about their family history and the stories of their fellow grade 6 peers.