In the spring of 2021, Dummerston School was awarded a $10,000 Farm to School and Early Childhood Grant from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Farm and Markets (VAAFM). This unique grant includes customized professional development provided by Vermont FEED. At Dummerston School, principal Julianne Eagan decided to use that professional development to launch a new buddy classroom program with a Farm to School and outdoor learning focus.
In early March, the 2nd-grade students carried on the Vermont tradition of tapping maple trees in the waning days of winter. We tapped two maple trees at school, neither of which was a sugar maple, but instead a Norway maple and silver maple. Thanks to Librarian Jody Hauser for scouting and identifying our trees! The Norway maple has a very slow sap flow, but the silver maple began flowing immediately! Mrs. Kane’s brother Thad came to help us tap the trees, and we were thrilled to get that hands-on experience that generations of Vermonters have had before us.
Later in the week, we enjoyed “sugar on snow,” using maple syrup that Mrs. Stoodley’s family had boiled last year. We took a walk down School Street to Leah’s house to experience their sugaring operation on Friday afternoon. We have all decided that maple syrup is DELICIOUS. We thank Tim and Whitney Patterson, Ryan and Karen Stoodley, and Thad and Jan Guild for helping us understand the experience of making “liquid gold!” We also had a blind taste test to compare silver, Norway, and sugar maple sap to decide which is the sweetest. The results were surprising! While most students thought the sugar maple sap would be the sweetest, the taste test indicated that the Norway maple sap actually tasted the sweetest to the students, as shown in our graph.
Erica Frank in our cafeteria baked up delicious maple-sweetened blueberry oatmeal cakes for the students to enjoy. They were a hit!
Farm to School efforts continue to expand with regular taste tests and activities tied to Harvest of the Month. And we’re getting ready to ramp up our garden, with cold frames already set up and a garden workday planned with help from the Rotary Club to repair and build new raised beds for Spring. Stay tuned for more!
“You are our sunshine!” This supportive message is displayed front and center on the walkway as students enter the new school year at NewBrook School. It set the tone for a year of learning, making connections, and sharing experiences with classmates and staff. As the new Farm to School Coordinator, it is true. The students are a ray of light.
The Farm to School Program is an immersive outdoor learning experience focusing on gardening, healthy cooking, and nutrition education. Brought to NewBrook through a partnership with Food Connects—an organization that supports educators, food service directors, and farmers in cultivating healthy farm and food connections in classrooms, cafeterias, and communities across Southern Vermont. It is nothing short of amazing.
The first three months have been exciting and rewarding. Sharing a passion for gardening and nutrition with children has always been a dream. The teachers and staff have been welcoming and willing to collaborate on bringing the outdoor classroom to life for students. Thus far this year, students worked to clean up the garden beds, spread compost, plant garlic, harvest mint and lemon balm for tea as well as save seeds to plant this Spring. Amaranth was explored as a nutritious grain that created a traditional Mexican sweet treat.
First-grade teacher Ashley Moorhouse has created “Woods Wednesday,” where students take learning to the school trails. Fifth-grade teacher Joyce VanPamelen is an experienced Vermiculturist bringing worm composting into the classroom. Students regularly feed worms compost that will create soil for the gardens. Third-grade teacher Heather Sperling and staff built an outdoor clay oven where students learn wood-fired cooking methods and traditions. So far, the oven has been used for delicious wood-fired pizza with homemade dough. Fourth-grade teacher Jason Gragen is an avid fisherman and woods enthusiast who brings his knowledge of local fish and wildlife into the classroom to enhance the science experience.
Future plans include an introduction to hydroponics, microgreen cultivation, Harvest of the Month taste testing, seedling starts for the Spring garden, pollinator exploration, and a Spring Celebration. Stay tuned for more community events.
By Amy Duffy
NewBrook Farm to School Coordinator
Stuffing scarecrows, painting pumpkins, cooking lunch over hot coals, and playing musical chairs… These are not your everyday school activities. But this is how the students at Westminster Center School spent the morning of October 29, when they celebrated their first Farm and Field Day.
Students from grades K-6 took part in six different activities crafted to link students to the outdoors and celebrate the harvest season. In addition to the excitement of scarecrows, pumpkins, and musical chairs (renamed “Boo-tiful Music!” in honor of the holiday), students went on a story walk, harvested kale from the garden for lunch, watched working farm equipment in action, and watched as the chicken for their kale salad cooked over coals in the outdoor cinder block kitchen, the “Cinder Cafe,” built especially for this event.
Despite the frigid temperatures, students were excited to be outside. “The best part is you get to have fresh air!” remarked Scarlett, a second-grader. “I’m having fun! It’s very fun!” exclaimed first-grader Anthony Lakeside. And fourth-grader Jenny said her favorite activity of the day was harvesting kale. “You get to peel all the leaves off!”
The librarian and Garden Coordinator, Mandy Walsh, said she was inspired by a similar event at Newbrook Elementary several years ago. Mandy has been growing the Farm to School program at Westminster for years and was excited to host her first Farm and Field Day. “We are so lucky to have the resources of gardens, animals, woods, and fields, and we live in a historically agricultural community. The day was about celebrating what's around us, coming together as a school community, and being joyful.” In reflecting on the success of the event, Mandy remarked, “I think that in the big picture, the best student learning happens when students get to be outside, working together, trying new things (food and activities). These are the days our students remember with fondness when they think back on their elementary school days.”
The Farm to School Team at Westminster is already planning future events and is flush with ideas of building on the tradition they’ve started. One thought was that perhaps next year, the sixth-graders could lead the stations rather than the teachers. Cheers to Westminster Center School for growing and cultivating leaders in the Farm to School Movement!
Looking for ideas to bring outdoor learning up a notch at your school this fall? Or creative ways to engage with students around farm, food, and nutrition education during this school year?
As part of the COVID-19 mitigation plan, school staff is encouraged to incorporate the outdoors as much as is reasonable in their instruction or daily routines this fall. Our Farm to School Resource Hub is a great place to look for ideas and support for outdoor learning, school gardens, and cooking with students during COVID-19.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Cultivating Joy and Wonder: Free downloadable resource book with over 75 classroom food, farm, and nutrition activities. This book is a great one-stop resource for elementary school teachers interested in incorporating more Farm to School education into their curriculum.
Teaching Outside 101: A 15-page guide from the Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC) all about how to get your classroom outside. This guide covers the nitty-gritty logistics of outdoor education and idea starters for outdoor lessons in each academic subject.
Cooking with Students: Guidelines developed by Food Connects in partnership with the VT FTS Network to help teachers cook with kids while staying COVID-19 safe.
We also want to highlight Discover Dairy’s Adopt a Cow program. This free program provides an exciting, year-long experience for the classroom where students get an inside look at dairy farming while paired with a calf from a Vermont dairy farm. Classrooms receive regular progress updates, cow photos, live chats from the farm, activity sheets for students, suggested lessons that follow Common CORE standards, and opportunities to write letters to the calf. Register for this school year by September 15.
We are wishing you all a healthy start to the 2021-2022 school year!
Take your pinky and thumb and spread them apart; press them into the soil, marking two holes. Now drop a sunflower seed in each hole and lightly cover it with soil. Westminster Center School’s Kindergarten classes continued the thirty-year tradition with seeds saved from the previous year’s sunflowers during a cloudy yet deceptively warm Planting Day this past May.
Returning after a hiatus last year due to COVID-19, Planting Day is a school-wide event to get the school gardens ready for the growing season. Every class in the school came out to work with Mandy Walsh, the school’s librarian and Farm to School teacher. Joined by Conor and Laura from Food Connects, Mandy led each class on a tour of the gardens before diving into their project for the day.
Fourth grade learned how any potato could become a “seed potato” and then planted the “eyes” in four mounded rows. Sixth grade was responsible for planting the corn, and then they got to work watering the rest of the garden, fed the chickens, and looked for snakes in the tall grass. Each grade had a specific crop that needed planting and saw how their efforts contributed to the garden’s success.
Throughout the day, the garden transformed from a tilled patch of soil to rows filled with plants. When students return in the fall, the crops will be ready for harvest. Students will work together to create a Harvest Supper to share with the community and celebrate their collective work.
Seeds planted during the 2018-2019 school year at Oak Grove School are bearing fruit as a living schoolyard and a vibrant garden featuring native plants take root on Oak Grove’s campus. Over the past two and a half years, a collaborative process between school staff, parents, students, and administration unfolded, making steady progress in spite of several obstacles. Principal Mary Kaufmann celebrates the project’s success, stating that “the schoolyard has developed into a lovely and welcoming space. Kids love to be outside! The more we have worked on the space, the more time we see classes outdoors.”
The visioning process for the project began in 2018 as a conversation between then principal Jeri Curry and a group of parents interested in making improvements to the playground. They identified problems including:
A lack of quiet spaces for students in need of a less stimulating recess environment
Outdated play structures and not enough swings
A lack of shady areas on hot, sunny days
Limited choices for a range of play opportunities across all ages, especially pre-K and older students
Every project needs champions, and there are several champions of Oak Grove’s living schoolyard project. This project weathered a change of administrators, superintendents, and facilities manager, as well as a school district merger and a global pandemic. It’s not been easy, but as the rewards start to emerge, it’s worth it. Some of the champions who helped bring this vision to reality are:
Former principal Jeri Curry. Curry began the project in her final year as principal, acknowledged parents' ongoing concerns about the outdated playground, secured start-up funds, formed a committee, and approved the idea to invest in mapping a long-term, broad scope vision by hiring a designer.
Current Oak Grove principal Mary Kaufmann. Kaufmann has supported the continued progress on the project’s goals through many transitions and prioritized hiring a school garden coordinator.
School garden coordinator Tara Gordon. Gordon led the move of the school garden and is connecting the garden to the classroom through meaningful hands-on learning and curricular connections for all students.
Former facilities manager Greg Frost. Frost supported the garden relocation, built outdoor stump seating and other outdoor classroom spaces, and managed many other project logistics.
New facilities manager Chad Pacheco. Pacheco continues to support the project as he enters into his new role.
Academic support teacher Laura Haskins. Haskins leads the Oak Grove Green Team and has been planting trees with students on the playground for many years.
Fifth-grade teacher Karen DiIorio-Bowen. Dilorio-Bowen has been integrating nature-based education into her curriculum for many years and built part of her curriculum around the living schoolyard this year.
PTO chair and parent Tara Davis. Davis immediately took a keen interest in the project—standing at the crossroads of parent, neighborhood, and teacher perspectives as a former teacher interested in outdoor education and a neighborhood resident.
The project began with visioning, which included surveying students, staff, and parents to get feedback on which playground elements these stakeholders wanted to keep and what new ideas people had that could be expanded on and prioritized. As part of this visioning process, the team brought in Nancy Striniste, a landscape designer with a background in child development, to help create a master plan redesigning the playground and school gardens. Certain elements of the plan have already happened, such as:
Relocating the school garden
Building a footbridge for creative play
Creating a new, wider, curved welcoming pathway at the playground entrance
Building cedar stump seating for the outdoor classroom
A highlight has been the move of the garden. Kaufmann says the garden has “grown and flourished thanks to the work of Tara Gordon and the students at Oak Grove.” Kaufmann notes that students take pride in the work they do in the garden. She sees many benefits in students “being able to be a part of something so beautiful that leads to harvesting and enjoying their hard work.” According to garden coordinator Tara Gordon, “The Oak Grove School garden is developing into a special place abundant with a rich array of perennial and native plantings, garden cultivars and annual florals, vegetables, fruits, and even mushrooms.” These plantings are designed to support and encourage outdoor learning, foster connections to nature, and provide opportunities to learn about the local landscape. Gordon sees garden education as an integral part of the school curriculum and community development. Community engagement has been one of the keys to success—during the fall of 2020, a group of “guerilla gardeners” came together and planted more than a hundred spring bulbs donated by various community members and kept the location of the plantings secret from the students for a spring surprise.
Student involvement is another key component of the project. The school invited all students to participate in the Pennies for the Playground initiative—a program designed to teach the power of the penny. Back in November 2020, tennis ball piggy banks were distributed to all students. As a show of gratitude, students were invited to collect pennies to help support the living playground project. Working with pennies made it accessible for students and families from all economic backgrounds. Collaboratively, the school community has raised $649.34 so far, including $163 raised by a penny challenge organized by Brattleboro Savings and Loan. Students voted recently to spend this money towards another step in the master plan—creating a new digging area won by a landslide. This will be completed over the summer and ready when students return to school.
DiIorio-Bowen’s fifth-grade class has been a key partner in the project this year through participation in the Wild Treasures program, 350 Vermont’s Rewild Vermont project, and a collaboration with Edible Brattleboro to plant additional trees on the campus. Kaufmann says, “The work the fifth graders did this year to learn about the carbon cycle and the environment led to an amazing culminating activity in which plants and trees were added to the playground, bringing more beauty and function to the space.” Karen’s students worked and consulted with Gordon to develop a plant list and placement throughout the school grounds following the master plan. Plantings included a whole array of native perennials, including trees, shrubs, and herbaceous pollinator plants. The project's budget also includes an extensive signage collection with artwork and research by the students displayed throughout the gardens. The fifth-grade planting day culminated with a closing circle around the new sugar maple tree. Students placed handfuls of soil around the tree roots along with special wishes they had written on pieces of paper to place into the hole. Together, everyone recited the Earth Pledge and sang the official state song of Vermont, “These Green Mountains.”
Jen Tourville's pre-k class has also been involved in lots of garden work this year, setting aside time weekly for planting, harvesting, and cooking together with Gordon. They are also enjoying an infusion of local produce into their snack program thanks to a CSA grant from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.
All classes took part in the project in one way or another, thanks to Gordon’s ability to engage all classrooms in food preparation with garden produce, foraging education in the neighborhood, and a dedication by all staff to get students out in the gardens and onto the living schoolyard regularly.
This project has relied on the incredible generosity of spirit, time, resources, and skills coming from the community. Many thanks to:
Edible Brattleboro for donating fruit trees and a hickory sapling,
Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center (BEEC) and local arborist Bob Everingham from All About Trees for donating large cedar stumps for stump seating,
numerous neighbors and community members who donated supplies for a mud kitchen playspace for preschool students, bird feeders for classrooms to feed birds throughout the winter, and permission to tap maple trees in the neighborhood,
Heritage Maple Farm for supporting the first school sugaring operation by supplying buckets, taps, and other resources,
Hamilton Lumber for providing firewood for the wood-fired sugaring operation,
and the Food Connects Farm to School team for their continued support throughout the garden move, providing professional development opportunities, and a matching donation to the Pennies for the Playground initiative.
Davis made a point of reaching out to the community via Facebook, Front Porch Forum, and casual conversations with neighbors. She believes in creating connections, “especially as we emerge from the pandemic—connection is vital in bringing joy and meaning not only to Oak Grove students but our community at large. Everyone benefits when we work together for the collective good - in this case, the creation of a vibrant living schoolyard that also happens to lie in the heart of the Oak Grove neighborhood.”
Looking ahead, there are several next steps in the process for the living schoolyard:
The creation of a sensory path around the playground’s perimeter, funded by a grant from RiseVT, This path will build upon the new bridge, incorporating a living tunnel and a balance trail.
The construction of an edible mushroom garden along the north side of the building will feature shiitakes and oyster mushrooms.
A digging area, funded by the Pennies for the Playground initiative, some mounds for climbing, and some cob construction structures.
Kaufmann sums up the success of the project, saying, “our school grounds are something we take pride in, and the work of the living schoolyard team, the community, and the students and staff at Oak Grove School have made it a wonderful place to be and to learn!” The living schoolyard project actively seeks support from local businesses and community members who want to be involved. For more information, call Oak Grove School at (802) 254-3740 or email principal Mary Kaufmann at mkaufmann@wsesdvt.org.
2020 was the year of quick pivots and short deadlines. This was especially true for school nutrition programs that went from self-serve salad bars, to home delivery using district busses, to “unitized” (individual) meals for physically-distanced students in classrooms. This task hasn’t been easy, nor has it been cheap. School nutrition programs have needed new equipment, more storage capacity, and much more packaging.
Most schools in our region have started using Oliver trays (a “fully integrated meal packaging system”) to streamline an otherwise very tedious process. WNESU recently received an automated sealer, further speeding up the process of packaging the hundreds of meals that leave their kitchen daily.
Thanks to the CARES Act funding provided by Congress back in March, funds were made available to states to support the costs associated with making big programmatic changes. Food Connects worked closely with Ali West (Brattleboro Regional Food Service Director, Fresh Picks Cafe) to identify the needs of all the schools in the Windham Southeast School District and apply for the funding.
In the central kitchens at Academy School and Brattleboro Union High School, the school nutrition programs were able to add additional refrigeration capacity. This will give them more flexibility when ordering fresh produce, as well as when making and storing bulk meals. Putney Central School’s nutrition program used the funding to purchase a mini-van to distribute meals. Transportation is another new bottleneck in programs’ operations. Having a dedicated vehicle for delivering meals to distribution sites and for transporting supplies will help ensure meals can get out on time.
In Guilford, new mobile waste sorting stations will make classroom meals a little more manageable while still making it easy for students to recycle and compost their leftovers. They also used some reimbursement funds to help pay for the new outdoor gear that was purchased for students and the materials used in building their outdoor learning structures. Lastly, Academy School is expanding its capacity to cook outdoors with students by installing fire pits around the campus.
Each of these purchases goes a little way in helping schools operate during these difficult times. Here at Food Connects, we’re excited to see the new equipment put to good use in 2021 as we continue to support the evolving needs of schools.
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.”
“I’m living my best life at work right now,” says Jon Sessions, assistant principal at Academy School. This quote came after a day spent outdoors with students learning different methods of stacking wood, including the Norwegian Round method.
Academy School fully embraced outdoor education throughout the first half of the 2020-2021 school year. With COVID-19 safety precautions in mind, preparations began last summer to make the most of the forest adjacent to the school, which is owned by the Smith Family. For years, the Smith family supported and encouraged the school to use the land, with Hank and Diana (Smith) Lange directly involved in the school community. Rainsuits and ponchos were purchased so that students could be outside on wet days, and trails and outdoor learning spaces were developed, including a mountain bike trail in the woods behind the school.
Since school reopened in September, teachers continue to think creatively about how to get their students outside as much as possible. PE classes are held outdoors in all weather conditions, and each grade level has its own outdoor learning space in the woods complete with a fire pit. Throughout the fall, students worked together to create shelters in the woods, including stringing up a large sailboat sail and creating stump seating, donated by Wild Carrot Farm.
Art moved outside as well—from beautiful fall leaf mosaics to potato printmaking using potatoes grown in the school garden to a month-long kindergarten arts residency with art teacher Wendy Windle studying owls and creating an owl walk in the forest behind the school.
With support from Food Connects, Academy School received grant funding from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture to purchase five additional fire pits for the school, which are being used regularly as a way to quickly warm up cold fingers and toes, as well as for various cooking activities. So far, students warmed up soup and made roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes over the fire with support from garden coordinator Kathy Cassin, who is looking forward to more cooking outside with students this winter. As the weather got colder, it was clear that there would be a need for more firewood, so Academy School put out a request and received a donation of 2 cords of wood from Anson Baldwin Tree Care, and Academy parent Erin Bristol, which led to many hands-on lessons in different wood stacking methods.
Through their outdoor learning programs, Academy School has found some silver linings during the pandemic. Disruptive behaviors have decreased dramatically, and students and teachers both are enjoying the benefits of more outdoor, hands-on learning opportunities. Mr. Sessions is hopeful that many of the changes they have made this year will continue after the pandemic has ended because they are so successful.
Kelly Dias, who is in her third year as Principal at Academy School explains that “the increase in student engagement is directly related to the amount of student-led learning and physical activity that’s happening every day. Students love to be outdoors, and they feel a strong sense of community and purpose as they work together to build forts, observe animal tracks, and identify plants in the natural world. Teachers are integrating life skills such as cooking into their curricula, and these transferable skills are making an immediate impact.”
Another silver lining to the modified in-person school week schedule, which involves two different groups of students attending for two days per week with three remote days, is that school staff and students have realized how special their time is together, and every minute counts. “Everyone feels so lucky to be here, and we miss each other during the remote days—we are working hard to build consistency and maximize the time we have in-person,” Kelly said. Connecting with the fully remote learners is important as well. “We’ve had some remote classes come to do trail work; and The Nebula News, a weekly segment produced by Music Teacher Bri Davenport, highlighted the exciting work that remote students have done from home. We are always looking for ways to keep the school community connected.”
In short, the teachers’ willingness to think outside the box, has quite literally led to the shift that Academy School has been working toward for the past few years. The pandemic has fueled the increased use of the forest and garden space on a regular basis for all students, and there is no looking back!
