Kellie Karavias

Kellie Karavias is the Culinary Arts Educator at Gregory-Lincoln Education Center in the historic Fourth Ward near downtown Houston, with an enrollment of nearly 700 primarily low-income students ages 4–14. Employed by Houston Independent School District, and working with Urban Harvest, she is also the founder of the Cultivated Classroom where students learn about food by working in the garden, caring for chickens, picking fruits from the orchard, and preparing these foods in the kitchen classroom. Cultivating their minds and bodies, Karavias’s students know where their food comes from because they sow it, grow it, share it, and eat it. She initiated a unique program working with a local grocery store to create a Kids Market. There, students are responsible for marketing, display, pricing, and selling the food they grow. Karavias observes that, “the school garden melts barriers and changes everything. It is a safe place for them to be themselves.”