My parents took us on a driving excursion just about every weekend when we were young. My sister and I would escape the green suburbs of Seattle for long, hot forays into Oregon, Idaho, and the dry plains of the eastern half of Washington. My mom always said she had to find some sunshine. We usually found it east of the Cascades.

I remember watching endless rows of apple orchards and wheat fields. I would take breaks from mercilessly teasing my younger sister and gaze out at white shacks on dusty frontage roads, amazed that people lived in the tiny shacks, which looked no larger than tool sheds. I remember my parents explaining about the hard lives of the people who worked picking fruits and vegetables in the sun.

Beyond those first childhood glimpses at a largely ignored aspect of the U.S. economy, my official introduction to farmworker life was during a college literature class through the book Plum Plum Pickers. After college, I frequently visited work camps and fields around Woodburn, Ore., with a friend who worked for the farmworkers union PCUN (Piñereos y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste). My Spanish language fluency has also allowed me to work with many migrant students and families in the two high schools and one elementary school where I have taught. During this 10-year period of learning, I have remained astounded that farmworkers' desperate working and living conditions are so accepted, unchallenged, or unknown.

My interest in introducing others to the largely unnoticed lives of migrant farmworkers now finds me in front of an 11th-grade U.S. history class at a large, suburban high school in Oregon. My students are primarily white, from relatively affluent backgrounds. Our introduction to the study of migrant farmworkers begins on a sunny May afternoon in which most students seem to be focusing their attention out the window, daydreaming of summer and not anything related to social justice. Inspired by Bill Bigelow's soccer ball exercise, I bring a slightly worn Red Delicious apple and a large stalk of broccoli to class. [See "The Human Lives Behind the Labels," Rethinking Schools, Summer 1997.] I ask students to sit in a circle. There is not enough room, so the class turns into a large u-shape. I ask them to pass the apple and broccoli around, observing, feeling, and smelling each item.

Their comments are primarily related to the smell of the broccoli, which is beginning to show some signs of wear. I then ask the students to list all the things that went into the production of this produce. A few students look uncertain and ask for clues. I give them five minutes to come up with their own list and then record their contributions on the overhead projector. The students list the following: water, sun, seeds, sugar, chlorophyll, fertilizer, pesticides, time, labor (planting, picking, shipping), trucks, boats, planes, plastic, wax, soil, air, vitamins, store workers, nitrogen.