What is the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP?
How to get kids to eat healthy food? Let them cook it!
As a FoodCorps Service Member, it brings me so much joy to see students getting excited about eating healthy food. It warms my heart seeing countless kids jumping up and down in the cafeteria when they see me pull out my taste-testing cart. But what makes my heart swell even larger is seeing kids get … Continued
#GimmeFive: FIVE ways FoodCorps Members Help Connect Kids to Real Food
Happy 5th Anniversary, Let’s Move! First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program has helped kids eat healthier and be more active so they can reach all their dreams. To celebrate the fifth anniversary, I am challenging YOU to #GimmeFive examples of how you are changing your habits to lead a healthier life. Do you walk to school or work? Have you … Continued
Teaching Kids will Make You a Better Farmer
I have had a variety of different positions throughout the course of my life working with kids and youth development. Somewhere along the way, I got this notion in my head that I don’t think you can truly understand something unless you can break it down simply enough to explain it to a seven year … Continued
The power of choice
I serve at Kimball Elementary School in DC. At school, I often hear teachers discussing how to help their students achieve more. Every day they are nurturing their students’ progress. This progress is measured informally with classroom discussions and formally with homework assignments and tests. But, as an educator whose “classroom” is sometimes the cafeteria, … Continued
10 Tips for a Successful Cooking Class
Here’s how to make the most of your cooking class.
FoodCorps Get to Know: Miguel from GBCS
Meet Miguel! “All About Food” is a cooking class I teach to 6th-8th graders at Greater Brunswick Charter School in New Brunswick, NJ. Two days a week, students are engaged in food-related activities like gardening and nutrition; one day a week is dedicated to building their cooking skills.
Fiesta Friday Local Lunch!
In my role as a FoodCorps service member, I am tasked with three interconnected pillars of work that, done together, can help transform kids’ relationships to food. They are: teaching kids about healthy food and where it comes from, engaging kids in hands-on gardening and cooking lessons, and working with school food staff to get healthy food from … Continued
Digging Into Healthy Habits in School Gardens
FoodCorps service member Erin Jackson was recently asked to speak on Montana Public Radio for the Alternative Energy Resources Organization (AERO) to share her experience as a school garden educator and her ability to connect kids to real food through hands-on gardening activities. AERO is a grassroots membership organization serving as Montana’s hub for sustainable … Continued
Reasons to Love a Small Town
In a town the size of Red Lodge, it’s easy to feel like you know everyone. I’ve often connected with other service members in small towns about the difficulty of getting anywhere on time because inevitably you will stop to talk to someone along the way. Despite the delays sometimes, I love running into parents; … Continued
The First Bite: Encouraging Eaters with Autism Spectrum Disorder
There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a student proclaim, “This is DELICIOUS,” with a mouth dyed bright pink from a beet smoothie, or watching them devour the roots and the greens of a raw baby turnip without being prompted. As a FoodCorps Service Member at Magnolia Speech School, a specialized school for children with communication … Continued