On Thursday, February 12, Biology I students participated in the first Fermentation Festival at PHS. Organized by Science Supervisor Jacqueline Katz, biology teacher Alexis Custer, and Food Systems Literacy Coordinator Shannon Barlow, the Fermentation Festival was an opportunity for students to showcase the sourdough bread they worked on throughout the year as part of their new phenomena-based curriculum.
The festival displayed handmade sourdough bread to taste, along with posters that demonstrated the biological processes that the students learned through baking their own bread throughout the school year. PHS parents, students, and even local bakeries around Princeton were invited. Custer, the main organizer of the festival, came up with the idea of incorporating sourdough bread into her classes’ last year.
“Microorganisms are not visible to the naked eye, but you can see [it] with a sourdough starter, the rise and fall of the starter, and [the] taste [of] a loaf of bread,” said Custer. “[So] the students could go ahead and see what they’re learning in the classroom is applicable in their real, everyday lives.”
In total, Custer’s students made over 300 loaves of bread, funded by a grant from the Princeton Regional Educators Association. After the success of this year’s curriculum, Custer has been working with Barlow to pilot a new food science program for autism classrooms starting next school year. The two submitted a grant to the New Jersey Department of Agriculture’s Farm to School Program, in which they were awarded $10,000 to develop the program and continue it for the future.
“What’s really nice about Princeton is [that] we can put our own unique flair on to the way that we teach biology that makes it meaningful to us,” said Custer.