In 2013, a seventh grader named Natchez Lee was barely hanging on at Willard Middle School. Childhood health issues meant constant doctor’s appointments and missed classes, and the transition from elementary school had been, in their words, “extremely rough.”
But twice a week, Lee walked into an elective where students grew vegetables, cooked them, and sold the results to the neighborhood. Something clicked.
“It was pretty much the only thing that I was looking forward to doing at school,” Lee said. “I honestly think that program kept me coming to school.”
More than a decade later, Lee is the chef behind Daffodil Projects, a plant-based pop-up and supper club exploring what they call “produce-driven diaspora food from the American Southeast.” The class that changed Lee’s relationship to school, Growing Leaders, is still running at Willard. Still selling hundreds of meals to the community every other Thursday. Still run by the teacher who refused to let Berkeley’s School cooking programs die. (Disclosure: Lee volunteers with Berkeley Supper Club, a community dining project founded by the reporter.)
20 students, $20,000 and a plan to rescue Willard’s cooking program
Matt Tsang arrived at Willard as a garden teacher in 1997. A cooking program followed a couple of years later, part of a broader Berkeley Unified effort to add a garden and cooking teacher at every school in the district, supported by roughly $1 million a year in nutrition education funding…