By Alicia Holloway
Alicia Holloway is a Farm to School Contractor at Georgia Organics.
October is Farm to School month, and supporters of these programs throughout the United States advocate and promote Farm to School and Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE) activities during this time. Farm to School and ECE programs lead to many positive outcomes for kids and farmers. Increases in students’ willingness to try fruits and vegetables and increased revenue for local farmers are two key examples of the impact of school nutrition in nourishing communities.
There is a lot to celebrate!
Georgia Organics has organized a statewide campaign in honor of October Farm to School Month for over ten years. The campaigns encourage students of all ages to learn about, eat, and grow a specific produce item. Upon signing up, participants get free access to an electronic toolkit filled with veggie-themed lessons, activities, recipes, resources, and more! This year's theme was "Pepper Palooza," but recently, we have celebrated "Spinach to Win It," "Livin' la Vida Okra," and "Oh my Squash." Check out all the free resources from previous campaigns here.
This year's pepper campaign was a sizzling success!
Participating communities estimated that their Farm to School Month activities involved over a million students! As a contract worker on the Community Collaboration team, I’ve seen first-hand the incredible work schools and ECE centers are doing around the state. High school students mentored elementary students by leading pepper-themed learning activities, cafeterias served school garden-grown peppers, and dozens of classes cooked and taste-tested pepper recipes. I’ve seen videos of students singing songs that they wrote about peppers, telling pepper jokes, laughing, smiling, and genuinely enjoying learning about growing their own produce!
Though I’ve just come onboard with Georgia Organics this Fall, I’ve long been familiar with the impact of their work with Farm to School programming. Over the past six and a half years while working on community-based Farm to School projects, I’ve seen the ripple effect of kids engaging in fresh food learning past the October campaigns. From where I’ve been sitting, at the heart of this campaign is as an “on-ramp” for newcomers to engage with Farm to School, whether that is curious teachers, students, school nutrition staff, or farmers. This fun and classroom-suited campaign offers a tasty morsel from all that Farm to School has to offer — and it comes in an engaging and accessible resource pack.
All photos courtesy of Monica Massei of Barrow County Schools.
I talked with a long-time colleague and friend, Monica Massei, about how she uses the campaign each year at Kennedy Elementary School. She tried it for the first time after hearing another teacher share her experience; after that, she was all-in in a big way. Monica has been nationally recognized for integrating Farm to School into her curriculum, and this year was a fiery hit.
All of her classes have taste-tested peppers this month. I asked if she thought any of them were trying fresh peppers for the first time. “Oh yeah! Out of my 29 students who ate peppers today, maybe four had tried them before, and none of them had tried all the different colors.”
Not only are her students learning about locally sourced food, but fresh food-themed activities are making their academic learning more relevant. Monica rattled off at least twenty ways that she could connect peppers to Georgia curriculum standards but also captured the core of the educational piece of the Farm to School movement; “You are trying something new. What part of that is not learning?”
Her students aren’t the only ones engaging in this campaign. The day after we talked 13 teachers showed up in her classroom after the school day ended to learn how to lead taste-testing activities with their students. She mentioned at least six other teachers who had already utilized Pepper Palooza activities with their classes. Most of these teachers aren’t regularly integrating Farm to School activities in their classrooms like Monica is, but when teachers see other educators engaging their students in meaningful learning, they want to be a part of educating our next generations on ways to contribute to the good food movement.
Farm to School programs, as treasured as they are, can be a challenge to implement, but this campaign makes getting kids eating, growing, and participating accessible, which is why this program keeps growing. It is an entryway for students who will have a positive experience with local food, for teachers who will teach through the lens of food for the first time, and for school nutritionists and communities who will become champions of Farm to School and the many benefits this scope of hands-on education has to offer all generations.
Learn more about Monica Massei’s work with Farm to School, and how she’s recently been recognized as Teach of the Year by the Georgia Farm Bureau as well as by National Ag in the Classroom. For any questions, contact monica.massei@barrow.k12.ga.
To learn more about Georgia Organics, visit georgiaorganics.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching the handle @GeorgiaOrganics or Georgia Organics.