Imagine serving 92,000 meals a day to a stadium-sized crowd of honest diners and tough critics. That's what it's like feeding the students who attend Metro Nashville Public Schools. And while some of these children indeed may be opinionated in their tastes, they're also vulnerable and in need of nourishing food for better learningafter all, eating well at an early age can form a positive foundation for healthier habits in the future.
nutrition improvement
Given the scope, it's no wonder that school food has fallen under scrutiny over the years. Rebecca Polson, head chef of all Metro Nashville Public Schools, has been working to make improvements despite the challenges of feeding such a large group within government guidelines.
'We have lots of new menu items this year,” she says. 'We're taking a lot of the processed foods off and going back to scratch-cooking as much as we can.”
Polson's Jamaican jerk seasoning, for example, includes a blend of 14 spices that will coat antibiotic-free chicken that has no added hormones. She has also designed this year's menu to pair more familiar items students may see at home with trendy yet kid-friendly healthy itemsthink Korean barbecue chicken tacos with Asian slaw and a side of garlic edamame or a quesadilla stuffed with sweet potato, black beans, turkey, and chorizo.
'I'm trying to get the kids accustomed to new flavors and vegetables,” Polson says. 'I try each new recipe with the kids, and they fill out surveys letting me know what they think. So everything new on the menu has been kid tested and approved.”
This past spring, the menu featured strawberries from Green Door Gourmet, the first and only local farm (so far) to be included in the MNPS Farm to School initiative. The program aims to provide fresh, high-quality local produce to students while also educating them about food and agriculture from the School Nutrition Alignment Team. The team is led by Jackie Contreras, community outreach specialist for Community Food Advocates, and Spencer Taylor, director of nutrition services for MNPS. During the fruit's short season, Green Door Gourmet delivered 20 flats of strawberries per week to five schools, and Polson says they were a 'huge hit.”
Sylvia Ganier of Green Door Gourmet says she hopes the program will continue this spring, perhaps even expanding its scope and offerings to quadruple the flats to each school and extending the season. Her farm qualified because it could provide certain safety and production practices and insurance requirements, which isn't something every small farm and garden in Middle Tennessee can do. Ganier admits that she could have sold the strawberries at retail for a higher cost, but she hopes the savings will come in the form of better health for students in the long run.
'The best thing farmers can do is grow delicious things that provide healthy food for us all, but most especially the children who are the hope of all things to come,” she says. 'Getting the kids involved with food and its source is critical for good health, better education, and inspiring our next generation of food producers as well.”
nutrition education
Polson acknowledges the importance of nutrition education and believes it's something that's missing across the board. Luckily, visits by Ganier and several additional grassroots efforts are aiming to make a difference while teaching students where their food comes from and the life skills that spring from learning to grow and cook it. Across the city, smaller farms and school gardens are making a mark by taking students back to the soil.
McKissack Professional Development School, for example, announced a new garden this year. Plant the Seed, a nonprofit that aims to create outdoor classrooms, started an educational garden last year at Ross Early Learning Center, and it is thriving again this year. And students from Fall-Hamilton Elementary School have visited the McGruder community garden with The Nashville Food Project for educational activities that range from observation journals to lessons on seeds and compost to planting vegetables. The Nashville Food Project's staff also donates food and cooking time to the school in their twice-per-semester 'veggie tastings,” where students sample colorful roasted root vegetables, kale salads, or sweet potato fries.
'The idea is to introduce kids to vegetables they might not opt for at home or have access to at all,” says Christina Bentrup, garden manager for The Nashville Food Project.
And though the school gardens produce plenty of food, they're mostly used as teaching tools, for now.
'I'm glad the children have a hands-on experience and can see how and where food comes from,” says Polson. 'I would love to see the MNPS garden program grow.”
nutrition nonprofit
Though not related to MNPS, Josh Corlew, program manager for Hands On Nashville's Urban Agriculture Program, has been running the nonprofit's flagship track for students, which stretches for seven weeks each summer. During the school year, the educational opportunities on its expansive urban farm operate as an after-school program.
In addition to planting and harvesting from the garden, the kids visit a cooking station every day with local chefs such as Tony and Caroline Galzin of Fifty First Kitchen & Bar. The program also includes lessons on the environmental and social impact of growing and eating food while teaching leadership, community organizing, and team building by having high school interns lead much of the program. About 40 kids from ages 8 to 18 participate in the summer session, with about 15 to 20 in the after-school program. They go home with skills to replicate the growing of food in their own gardens.
'Some kids might not have access [to fresh food],” says Corlew. 'We're acknowledging that and saying they're able to demand justice for themselves.”
The urban farm initiative grew out of HON's relationship with the city in response to the 2010 flood. They realized that a tract of South Nashville land wasn't being used even as it drained resources, so HON gained access to the land and converted it into a five-acre farm starting in 2012. Over the past three years, the farm has grown, thanks in large part to a growing roster of volunteers. And HON has also narrowed the focus to better measure students' success in learning. These days, Corlew says, the high school interns are essentially 'running the show.”
Recently, Hands On Nashville has been piloting what a merger would look like with the Nashville School Garden Coalition, an organization that has previously been volunteer-run. Corlew says that HON is hiring an AmeriCorps member to help create more structure within the program. The work in the gardens shows that students are learning more than planting, harvesting, and cooking. One of Corlew's favorite examples is a high school intern who demonstrated a knack for being empathetic and connecting students.
'He did a really great job of calming someone down who was being picked on,” Corlew says.
The students in conflict ended up bonding over the workthanks to the intern's leadership.
'It's a fantastic way to teach just about any subject,” Corlew says.