FoodCorps made an appearance on the Rachael Ray Show this month in a segment featuring the collaboration between New London Public Schools Director of Food Service Samantha Wilson and Chef Dan Giusti’s Brigaid, which brings chefs into K-12 school kitchens. 

“This year for lunch, we have $3.41 to produce a meal for each student. Within that $3.41 you have to pay for labor, you have to pay for maintenance, really anything that you need to produce the meal — which leaves you with about $1.25 just for ingredients,” Dan says. “So with that $1.25 you need to offer a protein, a whole grain, a fruit and vegetable and a milk. But more importantly, a meal that kids really will enjoy eating.”

“If kids don’t enjoy the food, they’re very honest about their opinions,” Dan adds.

Marisa Kaplita, a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member with New London Public Schools’ Food Services in New London, Connecticut, is interviewed in the segment about her role in getting kids excited to try healthy foods at school. 

“When they see me, they understand that I’m always going to have something good for them to try and they get really excited to do that,” she says. “I think that trust is really important, especially with younger kids.”

“Every day we have an opportunity to make a student’s day a little better through the meals that we cook,” Dan says. 

Watch the full segment at the Rachael Ray Show. 

Watch now

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When it comes to getting the right amount of fruits and vegetables, a Waterbury elementary school is taking it a step further to teach their students about healthy eating habits.

A 25-foot-long mural, featuring the Duggan Elementary School mascot, the Duggan Dragon, shows students that they should be incorporating healthy foods into their diets.

“It’s cool to see it all come together and see the kids get involved in it and just bring a little light into the city,” said David McDougall, artist.

David McDougall is a local artist who hand-painted the mural at the Waterbury school. It took him a few days, but he’s getting the kids involved with the painting too.

The kids are putting their handprints on the wall as a way to remember to eat healthy.

“We definitely wanted to incorporate the children somehow because after all, it is theirs, and we are leaving it for them. We wanted them to have a part in creating it,” said Abe Zimmerman of FoodCorps.

FoodCorps is a national organization devoted to ensuring children have healthy food choices in school. They’ve been a partner to Duggan Elementary School for six years.

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Via NBC Connecticut: 

Lonnie Burt is working the Milner Middle School lunchroom like a chef working a dining room, talking up today’s special: locally grown Swiss chard. 

“When you look at what the least consumed nutrients in our country are, it’s the fruits and vegetables category,” said Burt, Senior Food Services & Child Nutrition Director. 

That’s something you expect to hear from the district’s senior director of child nutrition. But what you might not expect: Principal Leonardo Watson telling the kids it was grown just steps away from their school.

“From a dietician’s point of view, the less food travels, the more nutrients there are in it,” Burt said. 

It’s the soft launch of Hartford’s farm to school program, an effort to take the trendy farm-to-table restaurant sensation into the school lunchroom. 

But it’s only nutritional if the kids actually eat it, Burt says. She’s enlisted the help of people like Claire Sickinger, a FoodCorps service member, to do a taste test with the kids. 

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With clipboards and pencils, fourth-graders fanned out across the garden outside Charles Barnum Elementary School on Tuesday to look for stages of the plant life cycle.

As they excitedly searched the garden, entirely planted by students, they found everything from marigold seeds to an eggplant at the fruit stage.

The students are learning about growing vegetables and the nutritional value of local produce through the school district’s farm-to-school program. 

The program will now continue and expand through a two-year $100,000 grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, who supported the grant, visited Groton on Tuesday to get a first-hand look at the farm-to-school activities and talk with district staff and students. …

Four years ago, Groton began partnering with FoodCorps, an affiliate of volunteer organization AmeriCorps that partners with school districts on farm-to-school initiatives. With families sending their kids to Groton Public Schools for two out of three meals a day, Koschmieder said his team goes above and beyond to make sure that nutrition is a top priority and to buy fresh produce from local farms, such as Whittle’s Willow Spring Farm in Mystic and Hunts Brook Farm in Quaker Hill.

Emma Rotner, former FoodCorps service member who was hired as the school district’s farm-to-school coordinator, said the program teaches kids where their food comes from, ways they can cook and eat the food, and what the food does for their bodies when they eat it.

By getting kids outside and planting seeds in the garden, they take ownership of it and want to sample the fruits of their labor.

“They want to take care of it, they want to watch it grow, and, then at the end, want to eat it, so it is really impactful for them to be part of that whole process,” she said, especially when they also do a cooking lesson.

Students also participate in lessons in the classroom and garden about food and “taste test” new foods in the cafeteria.

Charles Barnum student Lillian — school officials preferred to identify students by first names only — said it’s a fun to explore out in nature and have the garden at their school. The 9-year-old said whenever she walks by the garden, she always takes a peek to see how all the plants have grown.

She said she has eaten kale and nasturtium, an orange edible flower, from the garden.  

“I really like how fresh they are,” Lillian said. “It’s not just like from the grocery store and probably has been sitting there for two and a half days.”

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Cassandra Day, the Middletown Press

The downtown farmers market is celebrating a decade of offering freshly picked fruits and vegetables to the public in the city’s North End.

North End Action Team Farmers Market vendors kept cool beneath their booth awnings Friday, a hot summer afternoon — the third in a series of 90-degree or higher temperatures which set off Connecticut’s first official heat wave. … 

Americorps FoodCorps Connecticut service member Paige Petit, who is stationed at Macdonough Elementary School on Spring Street and knows most of the students, was tabling the NEAT booth Friday morning.

“It’s really awesome, because a lot of them will recognize me, and that will be what stops them on the road, and then we talk a little bit. Hopefully, that encourages them to come back with their families,” Petit said.

Dmitri D’Allesandro, owner of Middletown Framing and a member of the NEAT Board of Directors, is pleased to see the market reach 10 years of existence.

The Double Dollars program allows people who receive SNAP or WIC benefits or senior vouchers $1 for every $1 they spend at the market — essentially offering them half-price on products.

“Over time, it definitely has really gotten a lot of use from the people who can most benefit from it. The seniors are very steady customers. It’s perfect for them because it’s the middle of the day,” D’Alessandro said.

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By Cassandra Day, Middletown Press

Middletown, Connecticut — Bright and chatty Macdonough Elementary School students filed into the cafeteria for lunch Wednesday to test a new menu item that overwhelmingly pleased their young palates.

Americorps FoodCorps Connecticut service member Paige Petit, who divides her time between Macdonough and Farm Hill elementary schools, led a black bean and corn salsa tasting, alongside U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, offering tiny cups of the colorful and mildly spicy sauce.

Students at the North End school are particularly adventurous when it comes to trying new foods, which happens courtesy of a federal grant that funds fresh produce the children enjoy for snacks, lunch, and breakfast.

“We try to expose them to different things, like star fruit, avocado — not your typical apples and things like that. We’re trying to change their eating patterns. The hope is they’ll bring that home,” said Principal Damian Reardon as he circulated the room, gauging the students’ reactions.

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Serving as a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member can help you discover new, meaningful career paths. Hear from three alumni about how their experiences with FoodCorps led them to exciting and meaningful career opportunities post-service.

Apply now

Apply to serve by March 13.

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Groton — As the FoodCorps service member for the town’s schools, Emma Rotner has seen students excitedly coming up to her in the cafeteria to show her vegetables on their trays while more students are bringing them for snacks.

And students, once nervous to try fruits and vegetables, are now sampling kale and eating apples.

Through farm-to-school initiatives at Charles Barnum and Claude Chester Elementary schools, students have planted seeds in school gardens, cared for the plants and tasted the food they grew, Rotner said. Teachers also incorporated the gardens into the curriculum. For example, students took measurements in the garden for a lesson on square footage and learned about fractions while making salsa and fruit salad.

“That’s been a really fun way to make hands-on learning come alive for students,” Rotner said.

Since 2015, Groton has partnered with FoodCorps, an affiliate of AmeriCorps that works with school districts, typically in more under-served areas, to provide farm-to- school programs, she said. The program offers educational activities to teach students about growing food and provides farm-fresh produce to introduce students to new foods and help them create healthy habits for the rest of their life.

Comprehensive educational programs currently are in place at Charles Barnum, with a 51 percent free or reduced lunch population, and Claude Chester, with a 76 percent free or reduced lunch population, according to a summary of the program from the school district.

The Groton school district is now applying for a two-year $100,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture to continue and expand the farm-to-school program and fund the program coordinator position, said Superintendent Michael Graner. The Board of Education approved the grant application at its meeting on Monday.

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Food is so plentiful for so many in the United States that it’s easy to take for granted, and difficult to get the message across of the importance of reducing waste. As with most lessons worth learning, the earlier the message can be put across the better.

So a program started at Meriden’s Israel Putnam Elementary School this spring is worth recognizing, and it’s certainly nice to hear that it will be expanded to Benjamin Franklin and Hanover elementary schools this school year.

The Putnam program was the result of an expansion itself, modeled on a program started in Wallingford last year. It helps show the value of friendship: the Wallingford program was started by recess aides Jennifer Janus and Lisa Teodosio. A friend of Janus’s, Meriden resident JoAnne Grabinski, took the good news from Wallingford and brought it to Meriden.

The good news? About 7.5 tons of food rescued in Wallingford schools since February of last year. The program teaches young people about how important it is to not waste food. If you can deliver that message to someone at a young age it has a chance of becoming an ingrained habit as life goes on.

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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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