October is National Farm to School Month! For the next 31 days, we’re celebrating local food in school cafeterias, gardens in schoolyards and food & ag education in classrooms.
To kick the month off right, we wanted to share some of the great stories from our FoodCorps service members, Meghan McDermott and Lianna Bowman.
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As a follow-up to Diane Conners’ recent column, MyNorth spent some time out at Traverse Heights Elementary School to capture Lianna and Meghan at work. Traverse Heights is one of the four schools in TCAPS that have been participating with the Michigan Land Use Institute’s farm to school education and FoodCorps. These programs are geared towards educating kids about where their food comes from as well as giving them the opportunity to dig in and garden.
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Don’t yum my yuck: Watch this great, live interview with FoodCorps CEO Curt Ellis and MLUI’s FoodCorps Service Member Meghan McDermott about helping kids in schools learn to love whole, locally grown foods. The interview, just 23 minutes long, is hosted by NationSwell, a digital media company focused on promoting social change efforts. The link for viewing is here.
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Lianna Bowman penned an excellent blog last June about the new school garden at Betsie Valley Elementary:
“Despite the on-and-off drizzle and the last-week-of-school jitters, last Wednesday (6/11/14), Mr. Luebke’s 3rd grade class and I headed outdoors at Betsie Valley Elementary to get to work on their brand new school garden. We had delivered three raised beds and a load of compost a couple days before, and after much discussing over the “where” and the “how,” it was finally time to put the 3rd graders to work!
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Lastly, Gordon Food Service wrote a nice profile of the Farm to School efforts in Traverse City:
“Traverse City Area Public Schools began to educate students from kindergarten to high school seniors about the locally grown foods which are helping to bring the farm to the table. Tom Freitas, Food and Nutrition Services Director at Traverse City Area Schools says, “We work with FoodCorps who integrates curriculum into several of our elementary buildings.
