+ ** Spring Garden Planning Workshops **

Each spring, Food Connects hosts a series of workshops for school gardeners. Come with your school’s garden team and hear from local experts about school garden resources and best practices. A majority of the evening will be set aside for planning time with your team, so come prepared to set goals and map out this year’s school garden!

Food Connects will utilize the “Top 10 Tips for Increasing School Meal Participation,” a resource which compiles best practices from various sources, such as the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, VT FEED, the School Nutrition Association and more. Participants will develop a marketing plan during this training.

+ Trauma-Sensitive Approaches to Farm to School

Food and trauma are intertwined—food can establish a strong sense of community but can also be a point of stress and anxiety, especially in an overwhelming cafeteria environment, and for students experiencing food insecurity at home.

We will provide an overview of trauma and the skills and factors that promote resilience. We will explore trauma-related triggers associated with school meals. We will also share voices of Vermont youth with lived experience of trauma and food security. Participants will engage in an implicit bias activity related to food, and a food stories and food access micro-lab activity. Participants will come away with a set of recommendations for trauma-responsive practices related to food. This session will increase participant awareness of implicit biases about food, clearly articulate the connection between trauma and food, and provide tools for coordinating FTS and nutrition programs in their school through a Trauma Sensitive lens.

+ The Nuts & Bolts of Farm to School: Gardening, Cooking & Farm Field Trips

Liven up your existing curriculum with a FTS approach! FTS is a multifaceted lens that can be used to bridge classroom concepts and transferable skills to students’ lives. This introductory session will dig into handson examples of programming you can use right away and is connected to your learning goals. Together we’ll explore: cooking with students, using the garden as an outdoor classroom, nutrition education, taste testing, and connecting with local farms. Teachers will leave with new ideas and next steps to apply FTS to their toolkit.

+ ** Windham County Farm to School Gathering **

Each fall, Food Connects partners with the VT Farm to School Network to host a series of gatherings for farm to school champions across the state. The Windham County gathering will include a keynote speaker, discussion time, resource sharing and more! This event includes dinner catered by a local chef. Check back in August for details about this year’s event.