Local public school teacher Nikita LaCour-Dukes is transforming how her middle school students connect STEM to Louisiana’s agriculture and food economy. Through service-learning projects with nonprofits like Baton Roots and a $100 grocery challenge, students are exploring real-world topics like inflation, budgeting, and food access. Their work links science, history, cultural heritage, and civic engagement in meaningful ways. Dukes credits Pilot Light’s newly updated, peer-reviewed Food Education Standards as the spark behind it all. “Food doesn’t know race, gender, or ability. Everyone can connect to it,” she says, noting how food education now fuels lessons in chemistry, materials science, and biomedicine.