Features 3
MARCH 7, 2018
Teaching OCC the wealth of health A childhood of healthy eating led to an instructor’s passionate career. BY AUDREY KEMP STAFF WRITER
As she sat down at the lunch table in her school cafeteria, Elizabeth Blake said she wished her parents had packed her Ding Dongs like the all other kids had instead of wheat bread. “I always had healthy lunches,” she said. “As a kid I thought, ‘this sucks,’ because I wanted the Ding Dongs.” Now, over 30 years later, she couldn’t be more grateful. Blake, the only full-time nutrition and dietetic technology instructor at Orange Coast College, drinks her morning tea in a mug bearing the words “Please don’t confuse your Google search with my Nutritional Sciences Degree.” If you were to ask her how to eat healthy, Blake would tell you, “It’s the same old thing that your mom and your grandma told you.” Although science changes all
the time, the formula remains the same, she said — fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. “I’m really passionate about nutrition because everyone has to eat. This is something that is applicable to everyone,” she said. “There’s a role for people in nutrition worldwide.” Blake now teaches courses in general nutrition, sports nutrition, medical nutrition therapy, nutrition care, as well as a variety of internship classes for nutrition majors. Last month, Blake was recognized as the 2018 Outstanding Educator of the Year in the Dietetic Technician category for the entire Western United States. She also organizes collaborative cooking classes, in partnership with Children’s Hospital of Orange County and the California Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, to teach teachers and students with metabolic diseases and very restrictive diets how to properly nourish themselves. “One of (Blake’s) exceptional qualities is her dedication to creating and partnering with different organizations or facilities to provide volunteer opportunities for her students,” Dean of Consumer Health Sciences Jane McLaugh-
lin said. “Since 2010, she has arranged 37 different events for students to participate in.” But for Blake, helping to open Pirates’ Cove, Orange Coast College’s food pantry, is a much bigger payoff than this year’s award. “When I retire, Pirates’ Cove will be one of the things I’ll think about as a big accomplishment in my career,” she said. She worked on the project for four years. In addition to her work at OCC, Blake also serves as an advisory board member at Second Harvest Food Bank, so she worked hard to facilitate the alliance between the two organizations, making food, toiletries and even clothing free to students who need them. “I wanted to start Pirates’ Cove because I had personally noticed, among my students, instances of food insecurity,” she said. Food insecurity is a term that is used for someone who doesn’t have the money or resources to buy food. According to Blake, food insecurity is rampant on college campuses; up to half of all college students experiencing it at some point. “When people think about
college, you think about students that talk about philosophy. You have no idea that there are also students whose basic needs aren’t even being met,” Blake said. “When I heard the UC schools were tackling food insecurity, I thought, ‘Why can’t we do it?’” Allison Cuff, one of four student resource specialists at OCC, agreed that Pirates’ Cove filled a need that had yet to be addressed. “I think it’s amazing that Beth brought up the idea of improving the food pantry on campus. I had no idea that the need was so great,” Cuff said. Blake’s full-time position teaching at OCC is the culmination of 15 years of practicing in the field. A registered dietitian, she has a master’s degree in public health from Cal State Long Beach. Before becoming an instructor and program director, she worked at a Veterans Affairs Hospital in San Diego as a clinical nutritionist, a subset of the profession that uses “medical nutrition therapy” to treat diseases or injuries with food. “My strong feeling is that college instructors should have had some practical real-world experience in the field they are teaching,” Blake said. “I couldn’t
Photo by Devin Michaels
Elizabeth Blake, a registered dietetic nutritionist and full-time instructor at Orange Coast College, launched the food pantry and resource center Pirates’ Cove on campus in January.
be effective at what I do if I hadn’t had those 15 years practicing in the field as a dietician before coming here.” She then started developing programs to help prevent individuals with pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease, from going to the hospital altogether by eating the right foods at home. For Blake, her career in nutrition also started at home. Both of her parents grew up
on farms, her father in Nebraska and her mother in Gardena. Calif. She remembers going around her neighborhood with a wagon and knocking on neighbors’ doors and asking them if they wanted any of their tomatoes or zucchini. “I didn’t realize until I was older, how much of a blessing it was to have that background, because a lot of people have to make that transition later, from eating unhealthily to properly, and that’s hard,” she said.
Jewelry making is communal crafting for all The Sullivans breathe creativity into do-it-yourself community classes. BY SARA TEAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Patrick Sullivan’s necklace pendant prototype sits quietly atop a velvety gray jewelry tray. Subtle lines of sunflower yellow adorn the deep amber of a solitary oval stone that’s set against a silver wire frame, carefully and intricately twisted into place. At the next table over, Sullivan quietly mulls over the shoulders of his seven students, offering helpful tips with occasional hands-on correction. Tucked away in a metalworks classroom in the Arts Center at Orange Coast College, offering shelter from a particularly cold Southern California spring morning, Sullivan directed his sold-out
“Introduction to Wire Wrapping and Jewelry Basics” community education class Saturday as its students aimed to recreate the pendant with their own personalized touch and the student’s choice of stone, provided by Sullivan. “My favorite part of teaching is the success,” Sullivan said. “They (the students) go, ‘oh wow, I can do this!’ and that’s really the neatest part.” Sullivan, a man with a warm and patient gait, teaches community education classes periodically at OCC along with his wife Christine Sullivan, covering everything from basic soldering to jewelry making and Christine Sullivan’s upcoming silk scarf painting. Married for 52 years, the couple has been teaching for about 10 of those years. The two began offering classes out of their home when they formed Sullivan Collections, taking over Christine Sullivan’s former company Backalley Studios, and they now teach a weekly class at the Laguna Beach Art-A-
Fair in addition to teaching OCC community education classes. For Patrick Sullivan, teaching his students how to find their way with the wiring is half the fun. “The wire is so opposable to what we’re used to,” Patrick Sullivan said. “You have to learn how to manipulate it so it doesn’t manipulate you.” Truly understanding the nature of the wiring and understanding its nuances is not lost on Patrick Sullivan’s students. “It’s like the wire is alive,” Jane Carlyle, a returning student to Patrick Sullivan’s class, said. “The wire wrapping makes its own design. You don’t have to draw out a design first.” While the OCC class tuition is $55, the necklace is valued at $85 so as Patrick Sullivan likes to say, his students are getting a great deal. “He always likes to start the class off with the story of how he saw a $600 Tiffany’s silver
bracelet and decided he could make one of his own,” Christine Sullivan said. In his basic soldering class, his students are granted the opportunity to live out Sullivan’s favorite memory and recreate the very same silver link bracelet. Although the Sullivans have been teaching variations of the same class long enough to have it down to a science, it doesn’t always go as smoothly as they plan. Sometimes the silver on their trademark jewelry ends up smoother than the classes. “It’s great when it works and even when it doesn’t work, it’s great,” Patrick Sullivan said. The class is advertised as being held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. but Patrick Sullivan has stayed well beyond the class hours. He said as long as everyone leaves happy, that’s all that matters. “I can’t let them just leave when they don’t get it right away. I created the problem,” Patrick Sullivan said.
Photo by Henry Bate
Community education student Gail Cassman applies wiring wrap to a gem during an OCC jewelry making class.
While Patrick Sullivan directs his students, Christine Sullivan sits just off to the side, tinkering with silver as she works on a project, nearly undetectable save for the excited glances shot her way by students who have come to think of the Sullivans as both friends and teachers. According to Christine Sullivan, a former student of theirs took the classes because his wife’s arthritis prevented her from taking the class herself. The Sullivans were witness to the moment the man
clasped the bracelet, the finished product from the class, around his wife’s wrist. Carol True, a first-time class attendee at Patrick Sullivan’s Saturday class, is leaving the class both excited and invigorated. “I can’t wait to purchase some wire and practice at home,” True said. With the Sullivans’ classes garnering an increasing class retention rate and a maximum capacity of 10 students per class, practice might just be the best option available.
A poetic call to kindness after a violent killing A tribute for slain OCSA alumnus Blaze Bernstein remembers his life. BY KASSIDY DILLON
ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR
Students from Orange County School of the Arts took turns on stage sharing poems Sunday, Feb. 25, inspired by their fellow classmate Blaze Bernstein, who was killed in early January, as well as reading his own writing that he left behind. A slideshow of photos and home-videos panned across the big-screen of the theatre, a documentation of Bernstein’s life from his first wobbly steps, baths in a kitchen sink while his mother cut his hair, family vacations, sporting games and his high school graduation. Bernstein, a graduate form OCSA and student at the University of Pennsylvania, was home in Foothill Ranch for winter break when he disappeared on Jan. 2. Six days later, the 19-year-old’s body was found in Lake Forest, just a mile from his house. A former high-school classmate of Bernstein’s, Samuel Woodward, was charged with murder after finding that Bernstein had been stabbed to death and pleaded not guilty Feb. 2. The details of the case are not what Jeanne Bernstein, Blaze’s mother, said she wanted to focus on when roughly 2,500 guests
filled the seats of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa Feb. 25, the same stage Bernstein stood on during his school’s senior finale event. The Segerstrom hosted a tribute to Bernstein as family and friends made a “communal call for kindness” and encouraged everyone to “Blaze it forward.” “I can’t really accept it still. When somebody like this is taken from you so quickly in such a terrible way, you feel like they’re still a part of you even though you know they’re gone,” Jeanne Bernstein said to the crowded theatre. “I don’t know if I will ever feel differently but I know I have to continue on.” Jeanne Bernstein and Blaze’s father, Gideon Bernstein, said the only thing that will help them move forward and heal is to spread positivity and kindness and prove that there is still good in the world. According the Bernsteins and everyone who knew him well, Bernstein was a “Renaissance man,” a lover of art in every form and intellectually curious. “Blaze had a zest for life like no other person,” Jeanne Bernstein said. “From day one he hardly slept, preferring to wake up early every morning to explore his world, then fighting sleep because he was so busy enjoying it.” Jeanne Bernstein said her son flourished in math, science and writing as a member of OCSA’s Creative Writing Conservatory. “He imagined himself as a premed student at the University of
Pennsylvania. Blaze wanted to pursue a career in medicine and had his heart set on it,” Jeanne Bernstein said. “He knew he had a tremendous gift for math and chemistry and that he needed to use it to help people.” Gideon Bernstein said he and his family simply want people to “do good for Blaze,” whether it be donating to charities, volunteering at food banks or animal shelters, fighting for social justice and human rights, or simply buying a stranger’s groceries or coffee. “Now we are also creating a legacy for our son, who never had the opportunity to create his legacy himself,” Gideon Bernstein said. “Our loss has created an opportunity to fulfill Blaze’s legacy by continuing to make the world a better place in his name.” Gideon Bernstein said they intend to do that through the Blaze Bernstein Memorial and his scholarship endowment fund. According to the Bernstein family, people are encouraged to donate at BlazeBernstein.org or JFOC.org/Blaze. According to Gideon Bernstein, the donated profits from the event will go to toward college scholarships and charities. “Looking out at this audience, I think everyone’s asking the same question, how crazy are the Bernsteins,” Gideon Bernstein said. “People thought we were crazy to put this event together to honor Blaze’s memory here at Segerstrom...This is a movement and you are a part of it.”
Find out which flick is worth the funds. Check out the Arts & Culture pages in the Coast Report.