Tasting kale, chomping on collard greens or gulping
down edible flowers in the garden result in innovative,
student-designed entrees like one student’s
VEGETABLE- AND FLOWER-FILLED RAW TACOS.
Indications of changing behavior abound: Students at Harker
choose tapas (small plates) instead of loading up on big, single
entrees; because student interns prepare the food, students are
not intimidated and ask frequent questions. “We have a cooking
club and go into classrooms. We help them prepare things for
the snack bar. They want to know how fresh and local the food
is. Ultimately, they’re the ones reaching out to us to know what’s
best. But they also signal us to be better,” Martin explains.
At Delphi Academy, Associate Headmistress Kimi de Leonibus
says students learn about composting and basic botany during
science seminars held in the school’s raised-beds garden and
greenhouse. In the Lower School, nutritious competitions on
traditionally sugar-drenched holidays like Valentine’s Day prompt
students to feast on healthy red foods—radishes, strawberries
and more—instead of candy. Across the campus, kindergarteners
crack eggs and fourth- and fifth-grade students sample yogurt
while learning about healthy bacteria; they marinate lemons in
salt and spice while studying food preservation. Middle School
students branch into full meal preparation projects completed
at home.
Sixth-grade teacher Sid Raspberry says students with parents
who actively participate in their children’s nutrition education are
skilled at reading labels and savvy about percentages and serving
sizes. “Some kids even know that the food pyramid is published
by the dairy industry and is a marketing tool,” he says. He encourages
them to question authority. “We teach them to inspect
information for themselves, to not accept
data just because I’m a teacher. Information
from any adult could have confusion
or false information. We help them to find
conflicts and question them.”
A summer camp program at Delphi
allows students to make food selections.
Six years ago, hot dogs and other barbecue
items dominated the menu. Last
year, vegan hot dogs and fresh vegetables
triumphed. “It’s completely changed,”
Raspberry says. “When you empower students,
they utilize it and take advantage of
healthy choices in a good way.”
Even so, Delphi is constantly on the
lookout for hot lunch providers who offer
fresh meals rather than reheated frozen entrees.
“It’s a constant battle between cost,
nutrition and what tastes good and is easy
to fix.” Parents, says Raspberry, are more
responsive. “They used to compete to do
the biggest sugar treat. Now, it’s what’s
most nutritious.”
Lauren Fieberg is the Garden Coordinaby
August/September 2018 63
Earth Day to serve samplings for each class in the school,”
Cooper says.
Merryhill, in Cooper’s vision for the future, would have a fullfledged
learning kitchen to allow children to prepare, cook and
clean up meals. “We’d emphasize basic things, like boiling water
for pasta—that’s what my kids learned at home. Now, all four of
them love to cook.”
Chef Steve Martin executes an equally ambitious, but different
dream at The Harker School. The program noted in the school’s
award-winning Harker Magazine, YouTube videos and independent
education publications showcases new menus he writes
every two weeks. Culinary student interns from his alma mater,
Johnson and Wales University, prepare the food and serve as role
models for young chefs-to-be. Verification from a nutritionist
ensures the food is balanced and healthy. It’s a big step up from
when he came to Harker in 1991.
“Students are much more aware about nutrition,” Martin says.
“It’s their parents, or being exposed to multicultural foods. A lot
of schools can’t afford a program like ours, but Harker has stuck
with what I set up 25 years ago.” His top tip for getting kids to
eat healthy foods? “With children, you don’t want to trick them
into eating vegetables or certain foods; you need to educate them.
We teach them about organic food where it actually matters: in
produce, poultry, salmon and other seafood. It doesn’t matter in
spices. The beef we buy is super clean, so even there, you know
you’re eating a product without chemicals or additives.”
Nueva middle school
students play with
the chickens that
hatched this spring in
the campus garden.