About
The Cultivated Classroom centers on students growing food in an organic edible school garden and cooking in a culinary classroom. Students take part in integrated studies outdoors that include sustainability, science, math, reading, social studies, and nutrition. They also create and produce webisodes that share garden and culinary techniques, personal food stories, and ideas about food and how it impacts every aspect of one's life, and they participate in a weekly radio broadcast that provides culinary and gardening advice, including making dishes such as guacamole, pomegranate mango salsa, and spinach artichoke dip.
The Cultivated Classroom uses an organic edible school garden as a foundation where students grow what they eat, and it includes a kid-friendly culinary classroom environment for healthy risk-taking. Students produce nutritious meals they can utilize for a lifetime and take part in experiential learning that frames edible education as academic, with school partners contributing to the program’s growing efforts. The program has its own YouTube channel where students become foodie filmmakers by creating and producing webisodes related to food and gardening, and it uses media to promote grass-root social change around food. Additional features include the Tactical Snacking radio broadcast with culinary and gardening advice and 5-a-Day Fridays, which encourage 5 to 9 servings of fruits and veggies every day through school-wide participation in bringing fresh fruit or veggie snacks and eating them during a countdown signal.
The Cultivated Classroom is led by Culinary Educator and Founder Kellie Karavias, a 20-year veteran educator and the first elementary Culinary Arts educator in Houston Independent School District, along with Ms. Goodman, edible educator of the Hogg Middle School Cultivated Classroom. Kellie’s stated mission is to make edible education academic, accessible, and achievable to all children during the school day. Her work has been recognized through an HEB Educator of Excellence Leadership recognition, and she has been named a “Food Hero” by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
School partners are involved in sowing the seeds of change into the school community. The University of Houston Gulf Coast Food Project, from the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, documented the program’s efforts in a series of short films. The Cultivated Classroom has participated in Chef Jamie Oliver’s worldwide Food Revolution to bring edible education and a healthy future to every school and every child, Central Michigan University students have participated in a week of food education at the schoolyard, and Chef Anne Burrell has cooked for Gregory-Lincoln and the kids of Houston Independent School District.
Last updated March 16, 2026.
The Cultivated Classroom uses an organic edible school garden as a foundation where students grow what they eat, and it includes a kid-friendly culinary classroom environment for healthy risk-taking. Students produce nutritious meals they can utilize for a lifetime and take part in experiential learning that frames edible education as academic, with school partners contributing to the program’s growing efforts. The program has its own YouTube channel where students become foodie filmmakers by creating and producing webisodes related to food and gardening, and it uses media to promote grass-root social change around food. Additional features include the Tactical Snacking radio broadcast with culinary and gardening advice and 5-a-Day Fridays, which encourage 5 to 9 servings of fruits and veggies every day through school-wide participation in bringing fresh fruit or veggie snacks and eating them during a countdown signal.
The Cultivated Classroom is led by Culinary Educator and Founder Kellie Karavias, a 20-year veteran educator and the first elementary Culinary Arts educator in Houston Independent School District, along with Ms. Goodman, edible educator of the Hogg Middle School Cultivated Classroom. Kellie’s stated mission is to make edible education academic, accessible, and achievable to all children during the school day. Her work has been recognized through an HEB Educator of Excellence Leadership recognition, and she has been named a “Food Hero” by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
School partners are involved in sowing the seeds of change into the school community. The University of Houston Gulf Coast Food Project, from the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, documented the program’s efforts in a series of short films. The Cultivated Classroom has participated in Chef Jamie Oliver’s worldwide Food Revolution to bring edible education and a healthy future to every school and every child, Central Michigan University students have participated in a week of food education at the schoolyard, and Chef Anne Burrell has cooked for Gregory-Lincoln and the kids of Houston Independent School District.
Last updated March 16, 2026.
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