***NEWS RELEASE***
Centreville, MD– Earlier this month, Queen Anne’s County High School’s Outdoor Adventure class welcomed a special lesson in outdoor cooking, led by Dr. Bill Schindler, anthropologist, primitive technologist, chef, and founder of the Eastern Shore Food Lab and Modern Stone Age Kitchen, both of which work to preserve ancestral approaches that maximize safety, and boost nutrient density and bioavailability to the community they serve.
Dr. Schindler, a former star of NatGeo’s The Great Human Race and author of “Eat Like a Human”, joined Ms. Scotta Murdoch’s class to transform a student-built fire pit behind the school into an open-air classroom, where students learned the fundamentals of fire-building using the bow drill method, foraged wild plants for tea, and brewed it in a handmade Native American-style clay pot. The experience combined environmental literacy, health, physical education, cultural history, and hands-on skills in a deeply meaningful way.
This unique lesson and class not only connected students to nature but also highlighted the power of experiential learning and community in health and physical education. “The Stone Age Kitchen experience with Dr. Schindler was such an amazing experience”, said Ms. Murdoch. “It was so cool to see students connect with the outdoors in such a hands-on way. Cooking over a campfire and learning about plant identification are skills that not only teach them about survival and history but also help them appreciate the natural world around them. It is so rewarding to hear students express gratitude and see them dive into something they would have never tried on their own.”
The class further explored cooking methods, using Dutch ovens to prepare apple crisp with locally sourced ingredients, making sourdough pizza from scratch, and cooking bannock, an ancient bread, over the fire’s coals.
“Overall, this was a fantastic day of hands-on learning for these students and is the kind of real-world experiential work that is at the heart of Modern Stone Age’s mission,” said Schindler.
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