Bon Appetit, Green Street School!

Each spring at Green Street School, sixth-grade students celebrate their many years of studying French language and culture with a feast of Francophone foods. French teacher Alice Charkes, “Madame” to her students, developed a hands-on self-guided culminating project where students choose a Francophone country to study. Part of their research involves learning about the cuisine of their chosen country and preparing one dish to share with their peers. 

On a Thursday morning in early June, Sheila and Laura from Food Connects assisted Madame and her students in creating this feast. Madame prepared detailed recipes and laid out ingredients and cooking utensils for students ahead of time to make sure the day went smoothly, and for the next 90 minutes, it was a lively time as excited students took charge and prepared the feast. 

To start, the class ate a delicious mango and avocado salad from Seychelles and a hearty Haitian riz collé. The sides included a fried potato dish called rösti from Switzerland, and they washed it down with a refreshing Senegalese bissap drink. And, of course, who could forget dessert—sweet peanut butter and banana cookies from Vanuatu. This meal did not disappoint. 

Students collectively made 11 dishes and enjoyed a feast together in just one 90 minute class period. They worked independently to measure, chop, mix, mash, boil and saute on hot plates, and bake in the oven in the teachers’ lounge, using familiar ingredients like peanut butter and potatoes and unfamiliar ingredients like tamarind, hibiscus, and cassava. There were so many small delightful moments watching students problem solve and gain confidence in themselves. The best part was enjoying the fruits of their labor at the end—all students were strongly encouraged by Madame to at least try every dish. Bravo, Madame and bon travail, sixth graders!

The Farm to School Year in Review

Mixing bowls full of tropical fruits and veggies, hot plates frying up potatoes, and new foods abound (think tamarind, hibiscus, and cassava). This past June, Green Street School’s sixth-grade French class prepped mango and avocado salad from Seychelles alongside a hearty Haitian riz colle, in addition to 9 other dishes and drinks to celebrate six years of learning about French language and culture.

Back in October of 2020, this would have seemed impossible. Thanks to dedicated educators throughout the region and Food Connects support, Farm to School scenes like this cooking experience continued throughout the year and helped provide normalcy to an otherwise challenging year.

Many educators saw Farm to School as a means to get students out of the classroom. “Gardening time was an absolute highlight of the day for me and my students,” reflected Molly Stoner, a 4th-grade teacher at Dummerston School. “Students would run out and check for sprouting/growth in their milk jug greenhouses the second they got to school. Later in the spring, adding compost to beds, planting and watering the seed they sown, taking home sprouts enriched us all and kept us grounded in all the potential of our beautiful Vermont land."

This spring, Dummerston planted 12 apple trees donated by Scott Farm Orchard. Many other school gardens expanded as well. For example, Grafton Elementary School added a pumpkin patch to their school garden. Central Elementary School in Bellows Falls expanded its urban growing space and plans to develop a more robust Farm to School program that emphasizes community connections. 

For those feeding our students, the year never let up. Born out of the pandemic, our Who Feeds Our Kids series celebrated the school nutrition professionals who remain the backbone of the school community. Responding to rising food insecurity, they sent out weekend and school break food boxes. With local food from the Food Connects Food Hub highlighted, the food boxes provided another layer of support for families experiencing food insecurity. We’re excited to see the expanded service stay for years to come. 

Food Connects’ flexible support helped schools maintain their programs and respond quickly to new obstacles; when our network schools couldn’t find COVID-19 cooking guidelines, we researched CDC recommendations to create a protocol for educators to follow. We put together 800 sprouting kits for students during the doldrums of late winter, adding some greenery to classrooms and anticipation for more planting come spring. 

“It’s the creativity and flexibility that we saw throughout the pandemic that is going to help us spring forward next year,” says Conor Floyd, Food Connects Farm to School Program Manager.  “We’re excited to continue working alongside our school partners to develop new programming opportunities.”

What’s Been Cooking in 2020

Who would have guessed 2020 would end with sweet potatoes roasting over an open fire? 

Cooking and nutrition education are bright spots for schools across the region as teachers adapt and evolve to a constantly changing situation—truly embodying resiliency (a contender for 2020 Word of the Year). This story of resilience stands as a testament to the fundamental role Farm to School programming plays in today’s general curriculum—cooking kept students hands-on during remote learning and has flourished during the return to (increasingly outdoor) classrooms.

Westminster Grow Pack.

Last spring, schools closed swiftly—winter boots left in cubbies and desks full of supplies. Teachers had difficulties getting into their classrooms to grab materials for their lessons. Despite these challenges, cooking and gardening education continued to enliven the curriculum. Sarah Rosow (Guilford Central School) and Mandy Walsh (Westminster Center School) got grow kits out to students via pick up locations and bus deliveries. These kits enabled students to get their hands dirty in the “garden”, even if they lived in an apartment.  At Riverside Middle School, STEAM teacher Becca Osbourne tried her hand at virtual cooking lessons, which her 6th graders particularly took to. 

A crucial part of cooking education takes place long before students begin chopping veggies. Farm to School programming focuses on cycles—for food, the cycle is most powerful when students have a hand in each part of the process, from seed to plate (or Seed2Tray when talking about food in the West River Education District). Recognizing this, school garden coordinators worked hard last spring to ensure gardens were planted—filled with intentions of a bountiful fall and a return to normalcy. 

River Gallery Arts visits Oak Grove School.

Food Connects hosted regional calls for coordinators to share tips and tricks and provide connection during an otherwise distanced season. Thanks to these collective efforts, gardens thrived this past summer. Food Connects Garden Coordinator, Tara Gordon, maintained six of the gardens in Windham Southeast Supervisory Union and we piloted free family art activities thanks to support from RiseVT and three local arts organizations—River Gallery School of Art, Insight Photography, and the Human Art of Play. The culmination of these regional efforts were gardens readily awaiting the return of students if public safety would allow.

Gardening at Winston Prouty.

Food Connects helped new cooking programs get started this school year. The Early Learning Center at Winston Prouty attended the New England Farm to School Institute this past summer with Food Connects FTS Coordinator, Sheila Humphreys, as their coach. With an established school garden, the team has laid a foundation for the next level of Farm to School work, including incorporating local foods onto their menu, Harvest of the Month Taste tests, and building a strong committee to carry the work forward. Through a RiseVT grant received by Food Connects, the team purchased materials for a cooking cart. Not only does the team intend to do more cooking with students, but they’re excited to start processing school-grown produce into homemade baby food and snacks.

A staggered reopening of schools this fall came with its own set of challenges. What we’ve seen from our member schools is that those that leaned the furthest into outdoor education have seen the most success—ie. engaged students, happy teachers, and creative lessons. Food Connects helped schools keep cooking on the menu through specific guidance; stepping into an otherwise empty space, our Cooking with Students during COVID-19 guidelines provided a framework for educators and administrators to confidently establish safe practices around their cooking lessons. And we’ve seen those cooking lessons flourish—whether it be pumpkin pancakes in Guilford, pizzas at Green Street, or fire-roasted sweet potatoes at Academy.

Cooking with students at Academy School.

At Academy School, garden coordinator Kathy Cassin took advantage of a warm fall and large school forest to cook with students. Not only did students cook roasted sweet potatoes in November but Kathy also prepared sweet potato cookies and hummus for students to try. Students at Academy School can expect to see even more outdoor cooking in 2021 thanks to the addition of multiple fire rings purchased through grant funding Food Connects helped secure. These new fire rings will enable more students to be cooking at the same time while also making it safer for students. 

Not only has cooking and nutrition education found a way to continue throughout 2020—but the garden and outdoor kitchen (firepit) have become some of the most popular places to be at school. Most importantly, the sounds of growing taste buds have returned—“I don’t usually like soup, but this is pretty good.”

Pandemic Silver Linings: Creative Cooking at Green Street School

Green Street School’s French teacher, Alice Charkes, fondly known as “Madame” by her students, has been integrating cooking and gardening into her curriculum for many years. This fall, her job looks a bit different. She is teaching French remotely 3 days a week, and she is one of the 4th-grade classroom teachers 2 days a week for hybrid in-person instruction.

Initially daunted by the shift from foreign language teacher to a classroom teacher, Alice seized this opportunity to make lemonade out of lemons—which she normally does with second graders each year as citron pressé—and build on some of the things she loves into the classroom, even more, this year. Smaller class sizes (Madame has 5 students in her classroom) and more time with students allows Madame to do more cooking with students than ever before. So far this year, she has made a chickpea and fresh herb salad inspired by French chef Grégory Cohen and individual pizzas. She plans to make French gingerbread and cookies later this month. 

Madame found that there are some unexpected benefits to cooking with students during COVID-19. For example, in the past, she would have small groups of students prepare different aspects of the recipe but in order to keep the spread of germs to a minimum, she divides up all of the ingredients ahead of time and each student makes their own small portion of each dish, so they learn to make the recipe from start to finish and they taste the food that they created on their own, exactly the way they like it. For example, when she made pizzas with students in November, each student had their own ball of pizza dough that they formed and shaped themselves. They topped their pizzas with freshly made tomato sauce made with tomatoes and herbs from the school garden, cheese, and toppings of their choice including mushrooms, peppers, onions, and pineapple.

Naturally, Alice incorporates French into her cooking lessons. She was teaching her students pizza vocabulary (fromage, champignon, sauce tomate, poivron, etc.) for several weeks. Making pizzas together was the culminating project for that unit. Students asked for ingredients by their French names and played Hangman with French pizza vocabulary while the individual pies were baking.

Madame has taught a pizza unit to fourth graders for many years but this is the first time that she felt that she had the capacity to actually make pizza with students. Having a small group of students all day made it possible to do a creative cooking project that would have been impossible with a whole class of students during a 30-minute foreign language lesson. In addition, thanks to a mini-grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield to purchase a cooking cart for the school, Madame and her students had everything they needed on the cart to prepare food together, including cutting boards, graters, baking sheets, and a convection oven. 

Madame also received help from Food Connects’ Farm to School program coordinator, Sheila Humphreys. They began by brainstorming together about the project. As plans took shape, Sheila was able to offer concrete support by helping Madame collect ingredients and joining Madame and her students in the classroom while cooking. Food Connects staff traditionally support member schools (like Green Street School) through coaching Farm to School teams and providing technical assistance to school nutrition programs and don't often work directly with students in classrooms but given the unusual circumstances of this school year and the increased challenge of cooking with students during COVID-19, we were happy to help out!

Alice is also working on a French garden sign-making project with Green Street School art teacher Rachel Mangean. In the spring, garden beds will have bilingual signage created by students identifying the crops grown by students. Encouraged by the success of this year’s pizza making, Madame is brainstorming with garden coordinator Tara Gordon about growing more potential pizza toppings in the school garden next year. Finally, she initiated the development of Vermont Harvest of the Month posters in French and Spanish and assisted with French translations for the posters. Alice Charkes, ‘Madame,’ is truly a Farm to School champion!

If you are interested in cooking with students during COVID-19 but aren’t sure where to start, please check out these cooking guidelines for ideas on how to do so safely.

Bon appetit!

Universal Breakfast in Brattleboro Schools

It’s 5:30 am, and Brattleboro Town Food Service Director, Ali West, and her kitchen manager, Linda Griffin, are already hard at work preparing to feed a nourishing breakfast to more than 550 local children in the three Brattleboro Town elementary schools.

Green Street School was the first school in the district to offer Breakfast After the Bell, and it is a wildly successful program, with the highest breakfast participation rates in Windham County last year. This year, Academy and Oak Grove Schools decided to follow Green Street’s lead, which created a welcome challenge to Ali West, who is fiercely dedicated to feeding children in our schools. Breakfast After the Bell builds time to eat breakfast into the school day eliminating the difficult decision students are otherwise faced with—do I play outside with friends or fuel up before the start of the school day? It’s widely promoted as a way to increase breakfast participation rates—and Oak Grove and Academy are excellent case studies.

School breakfast participation rates

January 2019            vs January 2020

Academy School 45.6%                  84.4%

Green Street School 78.7%                         84.8%

Oak Grove 52.5%                               83.1% 

The breakfasts are all prepared at the Academy School kitchen, which serves as a central kitchen for the three schools. Ali and her staff developed systems to enable this morning ritual to run like a well-oiled machine, and a few months ago she invited us in to see just what goes into prepping breakfast every day.

In addition to waking up early to get things going, breakfast prep actually begins the afternoon before when all components of the breakfast are assembled. Then, before sunrise, final preparations go into full swing, the positive energy of three strong women (Linda is joined in the kitchen every morning by Lucia Hawkins and Jazzy Nightingale) working together as a team to feed the children while chatting, laughing, listening to the radio, and answering trivia questions.

Each classroom receives a bag packed with student’s orders, which might include breakfast sandwiches, bagels, homemade muffins, or the ever-popular option for picky eaters: cereal and milk. Each breakfast also comes with fruit or juice. Bags are delivered to classrooms as students arrive, and teachers have developed creative ways to successfully incorporate breakfast into their morning classroom routines. From Lauren Reavey’s 1st grade class whose “student breakfast helper” fills out the paperwork to Eugene Frost, facilities manager of Green Street, who delivers each bag to the classrooms before the students arrive—all staff and faculty take some part of making this a thriving success for our students.

“Knowing that I’m feeding children who might not otherwise get a healthy breakfast helps me start the day out right,” says Linda. “It’s important that our students receive the nourishment they need to be successful in the classroom, and I’m proud to be a part of universal breakfast in Brattleboro.”

What’s Cooking at Green Street School?

Thanks to grant funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, students at Green Street School will have many more opportunities to learn to cook in their classrooms and after school activities this school year.

Food Connects supported Green Street School in purchasing and fully outfitting a cooking cart, which is a rolling kitchen island stocked with all the equipment needed to successfully cook with students in the classroom. The cart has a food processor, electric griddle, two-burner hotplate, immersion blender, convection oven, and all the pots, pans, and utensils needed to prepare and sample healthy recipes.

Kelly Shifflette’s 4th graders were the first class to test out the cart, which will be used by all grade levels throughout the year with support from Green Street’s garden coordinator, Tara Gordon. They made a potato kale soup with fresh herbs from the school garden. Ms. Shifflette says that the soup “was delicious and we shared it with the whole staff. Using the cooking cart in my classroom was great and the students learned how to use knives safely.”

What delicious offerings will the students cook up next?

Reflection: Summer 2019 Garden Program

Green Street School Garden Coordinator, Tara Gordon, spent her summer working for Food Connects to care for school gardens at 5 area elementary schools in the towns of Brattleboro, Guilford, and Vernon. This summer garden program was made possible in part thanks to a grant from Rise Vermont. Here are a few highlights from Tara’s summer in the gardens:

Teachers from Academy School met with Tara in the spring to orient her to the garden and show her some of the crops they were growing. This included popcorn seedlings donated by Wild Carrot Farm that needed to be hand-pollinated. Throughout the summer, Tara connected with families on the playground while she was working in the garden. School staff helped with watering and harvesting. Funding for school gardens and the supplies needed can be difficult, but Tara reached out to the Brattleboro community and they did not disappoint. She was able to get a bale of straw donated for mulching, needed to combat the weeds and help the garden flourish. Teachers and students are looking forward to harvesting from their beautifully tended garden this fall!

Green Street School had families and neighbors who helped in the garden throughout the summer. The harvest was bountiful over the summer and extra produce was shared with school staff and neighbors. Tara was able to process and save some produce for school year classroom activities as well. Green Street has an ongoing relationship with Yalla Vermont growing and harvesting cilantro, parsley, and calendula for the Yalla kitchen. Because of Tara’s and the Green Street School community’s work this project continued throughout the summer. Tara also tended heirloom peas as part of a project in collaboration with the Brattleboro Words Project. These peas are an early variety which was grown in Brattleboro in the late 1700’s, and seeds from this year’s harvest will be available next year through a seed saving project in collaboration with Brooks Memorial Library!

Guilford Central School has well-established gardens and a great core group of active families who came to the garden throughout the summer to garden and harvest with Tara. Surplus produce from the school garden was brought to the Guilford General Store a couple of times and the school garden was highlighted on the General Store’s menu! Guilford Central School’s Farm to School Coordinator, Sarah Rosow, was a great partner for Tara, with many garden systems already in place, including a well organized tool shed and a clear plan for summer planting.  In addition to her work in the garden, Tara was also able to process some calendula and basil for Sarah to use this fall with her students.

Oak Grove School invited Tara to work in the garden with some classes in the spring to seed and plant, and learn about weeds. The Brattleboro Town School District summer school was based at Oak Grove this year, which allowed Tara to work with students and teachers regularly in the summer. Neighbors also showed support for the garden—in particular, a nice neighbor just across the street donated a bale of hay for mulch. The bulk of the food grown in Oak Grove’s garden will be harvested by students this fall and each class will cook a dish for the annual harvest dinner in October.

At Vernon Elementary School, the river bed soil is very rich and the plants flourished. The primary goal for the garden in Vernon this year was to provide families a space to grow and harvest over the summer, and crops were planted with summer harvesting in mind. Several families worked with Tara throughout the summer, and extra produce was brought to the Vernon pool to share with the community. Next year, this group hopes to have a Vernon School Garden Booth at their 4th of July town festival.

Community building was an essential of Tara’s work this summer. Tara created Facebook groups for each school garden as a tool to reach parents during the summer, and she made colorful flyers to spread the word about her weekly school garden parties.  She also made connections with Edible Brattleboro, a local college student, and several high school students who used community service hours to help her tend these gardens. Many hands made the work a little lighter!

It was incredibly helpful to the schools to have someone care for their gardens and build community in the gardens over the summer, and Food Connects is pleased that we were able to offer this program for the third year in a row. Many thanks to Tara for her hard work tending gardens and building summer garden communities at each school, and a big thank you to Rise Vermont for helping to fund this important and valuable work!

Photos By: Tara Gordon

Welcoming Our Summer Garden Coordinator

Food Connects extends a warm welcome to Tara Gordon—our new summer garden program coordinator for five area schools this summer (Academy School, Green Street School, Oak Grove School, Guilford Central School, and Vernon Elementary School). Tara is a mother of two, has a multidisciplinary background in the biological sciences, was the Garden Coordinator for Putney Central School for three years, and is now the Green Street School Garden Coordinator. Tara finds gardening to be a wonderful way to instill a sense of purpose, a practical way to grow awareness of our place in nature, a way to cultivate our curiosity and creativity as caregivers, and a way to develop a closer interrelationship with the natural world. She is looking forward to working in the gardens with students and families over the summer.

Summer garden care is a crucial part of a healthy school garden program. Without someone tending gardens over the summer, gardens get overgrown and underwatered, making the fall harvests smaller and the overall gardening experience less pleasant for students and teachers. This is the third year that Food Connects has offered this valuable service to schools. Some schools have been able to find funds within their existing budgets to “buy-in” to this program, however not all schools have been able to find funds even though they have the need. We are grateful to Rise VT for a grant this season which allows us to expand our program and serve the communities of Guilford and Vernon.

Green Street Herbs in a Main Street Restaurant

Green Street School and Yalla VT began an exciting partnership last fall. Thanks to the initiative of Tara Gordon, Green Street School’s new garden coordinator, students in kindergarten, first, and fourth grade are growing fresh cilantro for this locally owned Mediterranean restaurant on Main Street in Brattleboro. The herbs are grown in three indoor classroom grow stands. So far the students have successfully grown, harvested, and supplied Yalla with one flavorful crop of cilantro which Yalla traded for some of their fresh pita bread and cilantro spread that the kids enjoyed as a yummy in school snack.

This project has provided many learning opportunities so far for Tara and her students.  They began by seeding both parsley and cilantro, which make a great duo because they are close relatives—they are part of the same plant family—with some similar overlapping properties, and both are native to the middle east. To launch the project, Tara brought in fresh cilantro, parsley leaves, and cilantro seeds for students to taste test. Just realizing that both the leaves (cilantro) and seeds (cumin) of the same plant have different names was exciting! The classes learned health benefits and interesting plant properties of these herbs, plant morphology and life cycle, germination and growth requirements, and how Yalla may be using them in their menus. The kids loved knowing that they were growing herbs for a real live restaurant! Unfortunately the parsley did not germinate, which was a learning experience in itself, so they decided to focus on growing cilantro.

The second full batch of cilantro is now underway—it germinated and sprouted over February vacation. The students are refining their growing techniques, and this time around, rather than using the 6 cell packs, they decided to plant in larger rectangular plastic flats which will not dry out as quickly. Tara says, “with time and experimentation we would like to increase our growing capacity with alternating seeding for continuous harvesting while speeding up growth. Yalla would certainly like to buy from us, which could work out well once our productivity increases.”

This project encourages students to place value in nurturing plants while they learn ways to make the project more sustainable by developing plant cultivation skills, as well as business and production skills. It really is a community enrichment program where Green Street students are learning how to grow a mutually beneficial relationship with a local business. Yalla’s owner Zohar Arama says, “We’re investing in a new generation at Green Street School and it’s fun to work with them! We’re thrilled to keep this collaboration going with the community.”