The week before the start of the 2022-23 school year, Food Connects hosted a Celebration of Farm to School for school administrative teams and food service directors. We are so proud of the work being done by Farm to School teams at our member schools in Windham Central Supervisory Union, Windham Northeast Supervisory Union, and Windham Southeast School District, and we are grateful to the leaders who help make the work possible. At the event, we shared highlights from the 2021-22 school year at each member school, and we want to take a moment to share those highlights with a wider audience. Read on to hear the wonderful things happening in schools throughout the region!
Several area schools, including Academy School, Towsend Elementary, and Newbrook Elementary, were awarded grants by the Windham County Community Advisory Board of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont. This is a volunteer board of dedicated Windham County residents who are local champions of healthy activity and programming of all kinds. Several proposals were submitted for this round of funding to strengthen Farm to School (FTS) programming, and Food Connects is thrilled to celebrate this vital support for FTS-related wellness projects in some of our member schools!
At Academy School, 4th-6th grade classes are excited to receive funding to purchase a grow lab and humidity tent that they will use to grow plants for their garden beds. The grow lab will provide approximately 180 students the opportunity to become more involved in starting seeds in their classrooms. The seedlings grown will stock their school garden beds with vegetables, herbs, and flowers that can be used for cooking activities in their classrooms.
Townshend Elementary School launched a brand new FTS program in March. This grant will provide vital funding for purchasing ingredients and materials for Harvest of the Month taste tests and seed money for starting a small garden at the school. Taste tests are being given in each school classroom, reaching all 110 students. Students enjoyed the first Harvest of the Month activity in March, which focused on maple syrup. Teachers have already utilized funds from the grant to purchase a variety of whole grains for students to see, touch, and make art with, as well as some whole-grain bread and plain, refined flour white bread for April’s taste test. Garden planning is underway!
Just down the road at Newbrook Elementary School, the grant will fund multiple FTS-related projects. A woodfired pizza oven is central to Newbrook’s school culture and FTS program. This grant will fund the purchase of firewood to fuel the oven for six months and ingredients for pizza dough and sauce. The FTS team is also building two new raised beds next to the pizza oven so that students will be able to enjoy or work in the garden during recess time, if they choose, and will be able to harvest herbs and pizza toppings moments before their pie goes in the oven! The remainder of the grant will be used to restock the school’s cooking cart so that Amy Duffy, the school’s Garden Coordinator and FTS Educator, can continue to cook with students during her weekly visits to each classroom.
Many thanks to the Windham County Community Advisory Board of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont for supplying these grants and providing essential funding for activities and green spaces at our local schools.
My grandmother taught me that a thoughtful way to welcome new neighbors into the community is to bake them a pie and deliver it to their front door with a warm smile. Here in Brattleboro, our schools and community are in the process of welcoming approximately 100 new neighbors from Afghanistan. That’s a lot of pies!
In Windham Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) schools, Food Service Director Ali West and her staff welcomed Afghan students through her Where in the World are We Eating program. These special meals often take more work for the food service team, so our Marketing & Outreach Manager, Laura, joined the team to help peel potatoes and prepare the meal for the following day.
On a windy, cold Thursday in February, several Food Connects staff joined Ali and Brattleboro Union High School (BUHS) students for lunch to enjoy these delicious new flavors together. On the menu that day for the “Welcome Home Afghan Allies” meal was Borani Banjan (fried eggplant with tomatoes, mint, and garlic yogurt), Bolani (Flatbread stuffed with potato, onion, and peppers), Beef Kafta Kebab, and Lavash. The mix of flavors and spices was outstanding! Here’s what a couple of the students had to say about the meal:
“I like it. I like the naan and the meat has good flavor and seasoning. And the yogurt is good in flavor and texture.”
“Oftentimes the cultural food is a lot better than the other food.”
WSESD’s Nutrition program is not the only way the Brattleboro community is welcoming our new neighbors with nourishing food. The Brattleboro Multicultural Community Center-Ethiopian Community Development Council (MCC) is leading the effort to welcome our Afghan neighbors in many ways, including multiple opportunities each week for community members to provide a fresh main dish for lunch daily through a Meal Train site. Volunteers are encouraged to use a collection of Afghan recipes linked on the site, and feedback from our neighbors so far has been that our locally made versions of their traditional recipes are “somewhat bland.” Therefore cooks are encouraged to “be generous with spices, herbs, salt, and oil in the recipes.” Our neighbors say, “We especially want spicy food when we feel sad.” My coworker Beth and I made a meal a few weeks ago, and my kitchen smelled deliciously spicy afterward, those spices perhaps offering a tiny bit of healing to our new neighbors who have been through so much.
In addition, school garden coordinators at WSESD schools, in collaboration with Food Connects and Wild Carrot Farm, are planning to grow two culturally relevant crops in school gardens this season, gandana and nigella, and Kathy Cassin, the Garden Coordinator at Academy School, is featuring some Afghan dishes in her cooking projects with students. The Brattleboro Community and Food Connects family are so happy to play a small part in helping our new neighbors feel welcome, and we look forward to continuing to support and learn from them as they integrate into our area.
Sarah Rosow searches for a cukamelon in the students snacking garden.
Garden Coordinators from five Windham County Farm to School programs gathered at Guilford Central School for a “Cross-Pollination” event in late October. Garden Coordinators, often somewhat isolated in their unique roles, had the opportunity to share ideas, challenges, and successes with each other as they prepare for winter activities in the classroom.
More and more area schools have hired Garden Coordinators in recent years, finding that they are a key component to a thriving Farm To School program. In addition to taking care of the gardens with support from students and volunteers, they also plan and execute educational activities around gardening and cooking and facilitate teacher and student involvement in FTS programming.
Sarah Rosow explains to Mandy Walsh how the Kelly Kettle works—a wonderful tool for making tea in the garden!
Sarah Rosow, Guilford’s Garden Coordinator since 2018, hosted the event, showing the visitors the school’s three different garden areas, the outdoor classrooms, and concluding with a “show and tell” of sorts where Coordinators discussed useful equipment for cooking outdoors, curriculum guides, and sample lessons. Everyone was inspired by Sarah’s “snacking garden” where students are able to snack freely on mint, cherry tomatoes, and adorable cukamelons growing on her archway.
As they toured the campus, Garden Coordinators discussed their roles at their schools and what makes their programs unique. While Guilford’s program excels at innovative outdoor teaching, Mandy Walsh of Westminster Center School offered the details of her upcoming Farm and Field Day—an event 3 years in the making, where students will participate in six different Farm to School stations. Kathy Cassin of Academy School spoke about her after-school cooking and gardening club while also gathering ideas about deterring the deer that had been eating all of Academy’s beautiful greens. After hearing that Mandy had some success with growing a border wall, she remarked, “that's good to know because it’s been so frustrating losing our greens!”
Sarah Rosow demonstrates using a pull chopper, which she uses to make fresh salsa and pesto in the garden.
Erica Frank of Central Elementary, a registered dietician and current Food Service Professional at the school, spoke about the value of getting kids involved in cooking. Amy Duffy, the new Garden Coordinator at Newbrook Elementary, agreed. “Giving kids a little more control over their eating then leads to better choices.” Amy also shared that she works with each grade once per week. Sarah Rosow responded, “I’d like to pick Amy's brain a little more in terms of the scope and sequence, and also just learning how she works in every grade level every week and how she manages that because I’d like to move toward that model.”
Everyone gained new ideas from this gathering, and it was clear at the end of the event that everyone had so much more expertise to share and so many more questions to discuss. In response, Food Connects looks forward to hosting more Cross-Pollination for Garden Coordinator events for our member schools throughout this school year.
School lunch never tasted as good to me as it did on Tuesday, September 28, when I sampled a delicious Thai meal in the BUHS cafeteria. Thanks to “Where in the World are We Eating,” a new program by Brattleboro Regional Food Service Director Ali West of Fresh Picks Cafe, all Windham Southeast School District (WSESD) students had the opportunity to visit Thailand with their taste buds last month. Rather than the standard lunch fare of mac and cheese, pizza, and sandwiches, students could sample chicken satay, tofu Pad Thai, vegetarian Tom Kha soup (my favorite!), and mango sticky rice.
Ali was inspired to create this program to bring the entire school community together to celebrate the diversity of our school district through the shared experience of food. She collaborated with the district’s ESOL teachers to compile a list of the 22 countries students in WSESD are from. Twenty-two countries is a lot to fit into one school year, so she selected nine countries (one per month) to focus on this year, and she plans to continue the program and visit more countries in the future. Thailand is just the beginning! Here is the complete list of countries that students will get to explore with their taste buds this year:
September - Thailand
October - Jordan
November - Haiti
December - Germany
January - Kenya
February - Syria
March - The Philippines
April - Jamaica
May - Bolivia
Ali is encouraging the entire school community at all nine schools in the district to get involved, with invitations to music, art teachers, and librarians to feature music, art, and literature highlighting these countries with their students throughout the year. Invitations have also gone out to 6th-12th grade social studies teachers to take turns doing an in-depth study with their students on the featured country. As a culmination of this research, students will create slideshows to share with students of all ages throughout the district to teach about each country’s flora, fauna, clothing, and scenery. For Thailand, Sarah Kaltenbaugh’s 6th graders at Academy School created an engaging slideshow that highlighted beautiful statues, floating markets, and clouded leopards. This slideshow was shared with students from pre-K through high school seniors during the special meal. Early grades can decorate their school cafeterias with coloring pages incorporating images from each featured country.
“I want all of our students, no matter where they are from, to feel welcomed and celebrated in our schools,” says Ali West. As a chef and food service director, the best way that she has found to do this is through a celebration of diversity in the school meal program, which is accessible to all students again this year thanks to the USDA extension of universal meals. Ali even met the added challenge of including local produce in the meal by purchasing bean sprouts from the Chang Farm in Whately, MA, through the Food Connects Food Hub.
As we reflect on the anniversary of the statewide school closures that resulted in overnight changes for families and school staff, Food Connects celebrates School Nutrition Professionals. These school lunch heroes stepped up every day to ensure our community remained fed. What a challenging year this has been for everyone working in school kitchens!
Last spring, while teachers, students, and families were making the difficult shift to remote learning, School Nutrition Professionals continued to work in person in school kitchens, making thousands of meals for youth in our community. They faced the anxiety of working in person while so many others were sheltering at home, the fear that they or their loved ones might be infected, or that they would spread the virus in their workplace. Steve Napoli is the head custodian at Putney Central School and was part of the core team working in the kitchen to get meals out in those early days. Napoli commented that it felt “eerie” at the start, but knowing they had to get meals out to take care of the community was essential.
Food Connects conducted a series of interviews last spring with School Nutrition Professionals and other school staff working in kitchens in Windham County schools. We wanted to learn more about the effects of the pandemic on their work and how they were coping with challenges such as consolidating efforts into centralized kitchens, making the switch to unitized meals, managing childcare as working parents, and keeping spirits up during challenging times. Their responses inspired us.
Many changes needed to happen quickly when school kitchens made the switch to delivering meals remotely. According to Steve Hed, Food Service Director at Putney Central School, “The whole meal preparation system changed. It got crunched into a shorter period of time.” Along with the crunch of preparing meals in time to be delivered to families by bus, the packaging requirements shifted as well. Ariane Lavoie, also of Putney Central School, said it best: “Less kids, more packaging!”
Schools with salad bars like Putney Central and Central Elementary School in Bellows Falls noticed a difference. Erica Frank, Site Manager at Central School, said, “We got a salad bar going in 2019, and it really took off. We had so many options, and it was so fun. It helped the kids try new things, and we don’t have that this year.” On the other hand, eliminating the salad bar simplified food prep, which helped free up kitchen staff to meet additional individual packaging requirements.
The challenge of finding foods that could be pre-packaged easily and travel well allowed schools to try out new recipes. Steve Hed reported that they’re trying new things in the kitchen, “like a gluten-free, vegan quinoa salad with garbanzo beans for protein, and all kinds of veggies.” They also added a Peruvian recipe for black bean and rice burritos, both of which have been “a big hit.”
With the switch to Universal Meals for all students, Food Service Directors’ paperwork has decreased. However, last spring, developing the meal delivery system added a brand new challenge to the job, including mapping out routes to efficiently deliver food to families throughout the school district.
When asked what kept them going, School Nutrition Professionals spoke passionately about community food security needs and the importance of feeding their students. The physical act of going to work helped keep their spirits up as well. “It keeps me going to have something to do every day when I wake up in the morning, someplace to go,” said Linda Griffin, who works in all 3 Brattleboro elementary schools. “I’m not the kind of person who can sit around doing nothing. Having this job has definitely saved me from going stir crazy.”
Thinking about their biggest challenges, most spoke about missing the students. Academy School’s lead cook, Jasmine Star Nightingale, summed it up perfectly, with tears in her eyes, saying, “My biggest challenge is not seeing the children. It is very painful. They're all just wonderful kids, and just seeing them smiling every day...I miss that!”
Many changes happened quickly, and it was a challenge to adjust. Lori Reynolds normally works at Dummerston School, serving meals to 80-100 students each day. When schools closed, Reynolds started reporting to work daily in the centralized kitchen at Academy School, where meals were being prepared and packaged for multiple schools in WSESD. She was in charge of the alternative meals—approximately 28 daily orders for gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, and/or vegan meals. “I'm learning new things, which is a little bit challenging for me, but I’m doing it!” said Reynolds. She paid acute attention to detail to fulfill these orders, which she said “got my brain going very quickly” first thing in the morning.
Another challenge for School Nutrition Professionals with children was managing childcare and supporting remote learning while working in the kitchen during the day. Jill Harnish from Oak Grove School described the challenges faced by many working parents, saying, “It’s hard because my youngest is a senior this year, and he’s in special education. He’s got homework to do, so when I leave work, I have to go home and help him with his homework because he won’t do it when I’m not there.”
Community support helped keep everyone going, both in the form of additional school staff and community volunteers coming in to help the kitchens and in community expressions of gratitude for the invaluable work of School Nutrition Professionals. Nancy Gagnon is the office clerk at Putney Central School. When schools closed, she began working in the kitchen regularly, helping prep food and pack meals. When asked about community support, she responded by saying, “One of the biggest things the community is doing is showing appreciation for the effort that this whole team of people have provided. We've been getting some feedback from families...it buoys you and makes you really feel like your efforts are being appreciated. There’s a back and forth, connecting with families and knowing that they're happy with the food they're getting, and you feel happy that you're doing it.”
Many people mentioned the satisfaction they get from knowing that they are feeding children who need it, and they are proud of the quality of the food they make. Mary Beth Peterson is a kindergarten paraeducator at Putney Central School, and she helped out regularly in the school kitchen during the spring when her students were fully remote. Working in the school kitchen gave her a new perspective, and she proudly stated, “The quality of the food and the personalization that our food service staff put into what they do is phenomenal. The quality of the food is WOW; I can't believe it! The diversity and the kid-friendly food, it's quality stuff.” Thristan Coke from Bellows Falls Union High School said, “I am a firm believer that kids must be fed, no matter what. What’s going on is not their fault, and they shouldn't be punished for anything. So I take pride in that...I know what my kid is like when he’s hungry; I can’t imagine anybody else’s, so I am happy to feed them.”
We also asked what brought these folks joy in their lives and what they were grateful for. Jess Boucher of Dummerston School shared that some of her joy comes from “seeing smiling kids, happy kids, and when the kids tell me they like the food and how good of a job I’m doing.” On the topic of gratitude, people were universally grateful for their families, health, and jobs. Erica Frank from Central School spoke specifically about her appreciation for her co-workers, saying, “I’m grateful for the team who comes together at this time to make it work, no drama and just getting the job done. People coming together and bringing lots of different skill sets has been really nice.”
We are grateful for these unsung heroes in our community who nourish children in our community each day. The complete series of interviews can be found here: https://www.foodconnects.org/news-2/tag/Who+Feeds+Our+Kids
What better way to spend one of the first days of spring than touring farms and learning about greenhouses?
Last month, educators from Academy School, Green Street School, Guilford Central School, Oak Grove School, and Winston Prouty Center joined Farm to School Coordinators Sheila and Conor to check out Wild Carrot and Milkweed Farms’ greenhouses. More and more schools are looking to greenhouses throughout the region to extend their growing season and expand their “outdoor” classroom space during the winter.
Some schools like Guilford and Academy are in the information gathering process while Green Street has purchased a greenhouse and is preparing to set it up this spring, and Winston Prouty’s Early Learning Center is bringing an old greenhouse on campus back to life in partnership with the Inspire School.
While the school greenhouses will be much smaller than the production greenhouses visited, many of the nitty-gritty details are the same: what does irrigation look like, cold frame houses vs. sheet plastic, what crops thrive best, and how long you can extend the growing season by using a greenhouse. It was also great to see the other possible uses of greenhouses, such as a year-round playground and yard for kids!
“ We try to have a little bit of fun and have a few laughs, and everyone works really hard. We’re here to come in and get it done and serve the people!”
Lori Reynolds has been working in school food service for about five years. She usually works at Dummerston School, but since the pandemic started, she has been based in the kitchen at Academy School, working with a team of food service professionals from schools throughout the district to get meals to students safely. Here’s a glimpse of what life has been like for her these past few months.
Sheila Humphreys (SH): How has your work changed due to COVID-19?
Lori Reynolds (LR): Work is much busier—much, much busier! We're used to serving 80-100 kids in Dummerston. Here it’s more like 500 breakfasts and 500 lunches every day! It's much more work, but it's very satisfying. I’ve gotten a few more hours now than when I worked at Dummerston, which is fine. I'm okay with that. And I’m working with different people. They're very, very nice. All the girls are very nice to work with, and Danny is too. We try to have a little bit of fun and have a few laughs, and everyone works really hard. We're here to come in and get it done and serve the people!
SH: What has kept you going during these unusual times?
LR: Doing this work! It's very satisfying to know that we are helping people that really, really need the food. It's very surprising how many people need the food right now. It's a very satisfying job, actually, to know that you're really helping someone out that really needs it.
SH: What has been your biggest challenge during this time?
LR: The times when we really haven’t been able to visit people have been really hard. I'm a very family-oriented person, and I miss getting together and seeing my family. That’s been very hard. As far as my job goes, they put me in charge of dairy-free and gluten-free meals. That's a little challenging for me, to be truthful, but I'm getting through it. I'm learning new things which is a little bit challenging for me, but I’m doing it! There are a lot of details to keep track of because some meals are gluten-free, some are dairy-free, some are both gluten-free and dairy-free, some are vegetarian, some vegan, some need Lactaid milk...it’s a lot of different items in a lot of different bags! I pack between 20-28 meals each day, and I do it first thing in the morning, so all those details get my brain going very quickly!
SH: How can the community support you and other food service workers during this time?
LR: It helps when people show up and pick up the meals that we make. That's a very big thing because it's sad when you see some of the meals you packed coming back. Hopefully, when families sign up for meals, they can get there and pick them up and hopefully use the food. I know everybody has problems here and there, and if they can't get there one day to pick up the food, it's not a big deal, but we put a lot of work into this. We work very hard doing this, and so it's sad when you're rushing in the morning, rush, rush, rush to get out 500 bags, and then you start seeing the bags coming back at the end of the day, but for the most part, it's a satisfying job.
SH: What advice would you give to someone who is interested in this career?
LR: Well, it's very satisfying to see the kids come through the line. You get to know them and you get to talk to them a little bit as they're going through the line. It's very satisfying, especially if you like children. They're usually pretty happy at lunchtime—it’s a little break for them. It makes the job a little bit fun when you get to talk to the kids and things like that.
SH: What brings you joy?
LR: Family! I love my family, and I like my work. In general, life is good!
SH: What are some things that you are grateful for?
LR: I’m grateful for having a job. There are a lot of people out of work, so I'm thankful for having work. And I’m thankful that my life is good! I love to travel, and I’m grateful for the traveling I’ve done. I’ve been to Hawaii three times. I travel with my aunt because my husband does not travel. He says, “Go wherever you'd like, just don't ask me to go.” So I say, “Okay, no problem!” We take a trip once a year, so we've been to a lot of places, and I just love that! I love going to someplace new.
SH: Did you have any trips planned this year that you had to postpone?
LR: We were going to go to California, but we decided to skip it this year. We've been going to California, around Palm Desert area, for the last six or seven years. There's a nice little place we like out there.
SH: Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
LR: I think Ali is very blessed with the work crew she has here. I think we all work pretty well together, and we get things done. So that's about it!
This spring, classrooms across Windham County are overflowing with sprouts as students grow their sunflower and pea shoots. Ellen Nam’s Kindergarten class at Academy School has joined in the fun, and her students are discovering the wonder of gardening!
To help make food, farming, and nutrition education more accessible for teachers, Food Connects sent out over 800 sprouting kits to classrooms throughout the county last month. Growing sprouts is an easy, hands-on way to get students excited about the coming spring season. Connections to learning standards throughout the grades mean it’s easy to tie the activity into existing units. Since sending out the kits, photos of smiling faces and towering shoots have been finding their way back to the Farm to School team.
In Ellen’s class, each student got to build their kits, adding the right amount of soil, water, and seeds to their growing tray before finding the right environment in the classroom for their sprouts to thrive. As any gardener knows, it was then a waiting game as students’ anticipation grew alongside their newly planted crops.
The highlight came when it was time for each student to harvest their sprouts and make an individual salad of sprouts, cherry tomatoes, and ranch! Curricular connections came easy since students in Kindergarten explore the needs of living things—Ellen’s Kindergarteners can now tell you all about how plants need soil, water, and light to grow through their firsthand experiences with their sprouts. The growing didn’t end after the first harvest either—students were surprised and excited to see their plants continue to grow, and a week later, the class was able to harvest another batch of sprouts for a second snack.
We are thrilled to see so many students excited about growing their food. We’re also grateful for all the teachers who brought the activity into their classrooms—it shows a broad interest in Farm to School programming in our schools and community. Food Connects looks forward to strengthening and expanding our partnerships with classrooms across Windham County, making Farm to School integration easy and fun for everyone.
