As a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I got pretty creative in the name of connecting kids to healthy food in school. I donned vegetable costumes in the cafeteria, danced around in the garden in front of a live audience of 30 children, and hauled five-gallon buckets of compost through the hallways, to name a few. One of the most memorable moments was when I dressed up as the Very Hungry Caterpillar and read the popular book by Eric Carle to my second grade students. Through cute illustrations that teach counting skills, the book  ultimately imparts a lesson about how food helps us grow. For the lesson, I was lucky enough to find The Very Hungry Caterpillar at my school’s library in Vernon, CT, but many service members around the nation are not so lucky.

FoodCorps service members are placed in high-need schools that are often strapped for resources as well as personnel. Here in Connecticut, several of our FoodCorps schools do not have a library, or even a space for books at all. Those that do have libraries have lost funding for librarians, meaning that in-class reading time is even more important. This year, one of our national funding partners, C&S Wholesale Grocers, made possible the donation of books for all 225+ FoodCorps AmeriCorps service members around the country. Sourced through FirstBook.org, the brand-new, high-quality books meant that hundreds of kids were able to access books while learning about food in the garden or classroom. At Parkville School in Hartford, where over 90% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and there is no space for a library, teachers often purchase books for their classrooms with their own money.  FoodCorps service member Allie was able to choose 15 books to use in her lessons—and those books are now part of the classrooms at Parkville.

Books are an essential resource for all classrooms and are especially important for the FoodCorps lessons our service members deliver to elementary-aged students. Starting a lesson with a relevant book connects to English Language Arts standards. Stories can also teach us about more than just the English & Language Arts — they can also teach us how to navigate the world around us.

When service member Alyssa read Tops & Bottoms by Janet Stevens to her Pre-K students in Hartford, they were transported all the way to a farm (where animals talked!). The book shows students which vegetables grow above and below the ground, while teaching an underlying lesson about kindness and work ethic—something that would’ve been difficult for Alyssa to teach without the book as a guide.  

At the same time that some books take us to another world, other books connect us to characters that seem similar to ourselves or communities that seem similar to our own. After receiving Sylvia’s Spinach by Katherine Pryor, a book about a child that originally doesn’t like spinach but learns to love it after giving it a second chance, one of Katie Alderman’s students came up to her a week later and said that she related to Sylvia, because after the lesson, she “tried pineapple again and liked it!”

Katie Alderman serves in New Haven, where she co-teaches a bilingual Spanish/English class of kindergarteners once a week. Thanks to C&S Wholesale Grocers, Katie was able to order many books in both English and Spanish, making these stories accessible to her whole class.

Books can take us to new lands, bring us home, and create shared stories that connect people across generations and locations. Using these stories helps FoodCorps service members bring their lessons to life.

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The folks working toward this goal and leading the initiatives are innovative and inspiring. Food Service Director Sam Wilson has been essential in sourcing local produce for her meal programs. She’s partnered with FoodCorps for four years now, to enhance the healthy school environment with hands-on nutrition and garden lessons. New this school year is an exciting collaboration with Brigaid.  Brigaid is placing professional chefs in New London cafeterias, making school lunch more like fine dining—real plates, new recipes, and more scratch cooking.

This new effort, coupled with our service members seems to be a winning recipe (pun intended). Our two corps members in New London, Jess and Katie, are creating an interactive cafeteria environment. They know that if students experience new foods in some way—through tasting it, cooking it, or growing it—they are more likely to eat it and enjoy it. So, as the chefs start to roll out new recipes like roasted tomato soup and seasoned watermelon, students are giving feedback that is considered before the final product makes it onto the menu.  At the same time, Jess and Katie are also creating interactive lessons and activities  to expand upon students’ knowledge of where food comes from and how it grows.  This leaves students feeling excited and empowered to make healthy meal choices on their own!

Special thanks to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield for supporting our increased service member presence in New London this year! 

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This is so good, I could eat seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and sevenths!

-Third grader after eating American Flag parfaits (with strawberries, yogurt, and blueberries)

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When it comes to school food, fruits like apples, oranges, or pears often keep better, and are therefore served the majority of the time.  But, once in a while, especially towards the end of school, it can be worth the extra effort to surprise the students with something like strawberries.  With the help of Chris Avtges, Food Service Director of Vernon Public Schools, we were able to procure enough strawberries to serve as a fruit option at all five elementary schools in the Vernon Public Schools district.  Over the course of the last five days of school, I visited each elementary school to promote the strawberries, and the farm they came from, Scantic Valley Farm, in Somers, CT.  The responses were overwhelmingly positive, by both students and staff alike.  Our incredible cafeteria staff were eager to get something new and colorful on the line, and our kids were beyond excited to try the juicy berries.  When they came through the lunch line all you would hear was:

“WOAH STRAWBERRIES!”

“WE GET STRAWBERRIES!”

“THEY’RE MY FAVORITE!”

But, nothing beats walking out into the cafeteria when the students are done eating to hands a faces dyed red from the ripe berries that they couldn’t wait to eat.

As challenging as Farm to School can be in Connecticut, with the long winter, and the logistics of transportation, costs, and labor, it is all worth it when you see the excitement on a child’s face who gets to eat a berry that was just picked that morning. Nothing really tastes the same after that.  And, what really takes the (strawberry short)CAKE?  Getting to go back to the farm where we purchased those strawberries, and let the farmer herself know how excited the kids were during lunch that day.

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“Is she hurt?”
“Did someone pull a kale plant thinking it was a weed?”
“Did she accidentally pour the watering can on herself instead of our radishes?”

It turned out none of the above scenarios were what caused a quiet eight year old to yell out in fright.  When I reached her side, she had a small trowel in one hand, and a half of an earthworm in the other.  The rest of the earthworm, I presume, was somewhere left in the soil of the garden bed she had been weeding in.

This girl was absolutely heart broken that she had killed a worm.  Obviously, I too was a little upset- here I had a distraught girl in the garden, and, a dead worm.  However, I was also proud. I was proud because this student had taken to heart our number one garden rule “respect all living things”—fellow classmates, beautiful sunflowers, tasty strawberries, slimy worms, scary beetles, buzzing bees, and much, much more.   She knew that worms were good for our soil, and therefore our plants, and was disappointed that she had killed a beneficial creature.  I consoled her by explaining there were a lot of worms in our garden, and it wasn’t that big of a deal.  She decided to be more careful in the future, and then gathered the rest of the group to give the worm a proper burial in the compost bin.

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“WHO IS READY TO GUAC AND ROLL?!”

Unfortunately, my quirky pun did not elicit the response I had hoped for— instead students started groaning, “ewww that’s green” and “where’s the ranch?!” even “I am not touching that!”

Although these comments seem harsh, I was unfazed, for they are not out of the ordinary; in fact, I hear remarks like this on a near daily basis as a FoodCorps service member with the Tolland County Extension Center in Vernon.  I am constantly cooking with kids, mostly elementary school students; trying to introduce fresh, healthy foods into their diets.  This almost always means having to deal with the one, or two, or even twenty children who are hesitant to try something new.

And oh boy was guacamole a new one.  To the after school 4-H club, the avocado I was holding looked  like some kind of cross between a snake and a dinosaur egg, and they did not want to touch it.  My little cooks were being especially challenging today, it seemed.  After the group gathered the nerve to mash up the avocado with some tomato, cilantro, lime juice, and spices, we moved on to cutting veggies, and I started brainstorming how to get these students to just taste a little bit of our wonderful creation.

As I sat chopping carrots with a few especially obstinate fifth graders, I started explaining how nutritious an avocado was …more potassium than a banana, special fats that are good for your heart, fiber that keeps you full, etc. etc.  They listened and nodded their heads, but were not persuaded to try the dip that looked different than anything they had ever seen before.

I racked my brain for a new plan, something fun, something unexpected.  Then it dawned on me- food art!  In what other setting would these students be able to play with their food? I took our giant bowl of guacamole, and started to spread it evenly on plates.  I gave each student a plate and various types of cut veggies and let them go wild.  Trees, flowers, smiley faces, abstract designs– you name it, and they made it.   It was messy, it was chaotic, and it was a success.  After all the effort each child put into creating their masterpiece, were they just going to let it go to waste? No! They were going to eat it- and soon enough, the “ewws” turned into “yums” and the “I’m not touching that” turned into “it’s not thattttt baddddd” (essentially a 5-star rating when it comes to fifth graders).  I sat back, crunching on a stick of celery, savoring my small victory, and brainstorming ways to get the students to try the hummus we’d be making the very next day.

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