Sarah Bernardi is one of the teachers from Bancroft Elementary School here in the District of Columbia whose students famously have been helping Michelle Obama grow the new White House vegetable garden. Despite all the photo opps with the First Lady, however, Sarah says her own school garden and others like it are not supported by school administrators and sorely need a lifeline.
By Sarah Bernardi
As one of the teachers involved with Michelle Obama and the White House vegetable garden, I’ve been impressed with the sudden surge of public interest in the simple act of children planting seeds. At Bancroft Elementary School, where I work first and foremost as an art teacher, we know only too well the benefits children get from growing their own food.
But I don’t think the public has any inkling how hard it is for teachers to maintain school gardens like the one we have at Bancroft. Despite all the hoopla over school gardening, the truth is teachers engage in these activities at risk of their jobs. You see, gardening is not part of the mandated school curriculum. We are supposed to be teaching reading and math. As much as we believe school gardens offer a multitude of teaching opportunities, schools do very little to support us. Principals and teachers have been bluntly told that they will lose their jobs if math and reading scores don’t improve. We desperately need help. We need someone to take charge of our school gardens.
The kids you see in all the photos working with the First Lady in the White House garden, or making breakfast on the Today Show with the Obamas’ chef, Sam Kass, are fifth graders from my school. One of the reasons I chose to work at Bancroft two years ago was its garden. I had just moved back to the Washington area from South Carolina where I grew things pretty much all year round in my own yard. With visions of sunflowers and big tomato plants dancing in my head, I signed up for a community garden plot in D.C. But the waiting list was long. The idea of living without a patch of dirt to play in was hard to swallow.
by Nili Yossinger and Patricia Massey, cross-posted from the Food Bank blog.
The Food For Kids department partners with sites throughout our
community, making sure that children have enough food and proper
nutrition at times when they are most at risk of hunger.
The National Building Museum was packed this past Tuesday for a panel focusing on the challenges and opportunities for urban agriculture. The event was part of a larger public series at the Building Museum entitled For the Greener Good that calls on experts from diverse backgrounds to investigate links between environmental sustainability and design, public health, energy policy, bioscience, infrastructure, education, and popular culture.
The panel featured Josh Viertel, the president of Slow Food USA, Steve Cohen, Portland’s food policy and programs manager, and our very own Liz Falk, founder of Common Good City Farm.
Panelists stressed the need for everyone to get involved in the movement for “good food,” activating their networks of contacts to advocate for change on a both a local and regional level. Josh Viertel acknowledged the formidable structural barriers for sustainable urban agriculture, and pointed to the opportunities inherent in having strong government allies (Kathleen Merrigan, Tom Vilsack) and significant legislation pending on child nutrition.
Likening the movement for “good food” to other social phenomenons like civil rights, Viertel recounted what Obama had said to an aid, in confidence: “Show me the social movement behind it!” By marshaling activists, educators, and officials from the public health, environmental, and poverty sectors, we can create a movement that holds government accountable for producing food that is “good, clean, and fair” in the parlance of Slow Food USA.
Moderator of the panel Allison Arieff exposed some tension when she asked: “Is there a sustainable business model for growing food in the city?” Viertel actually answered no. He pointed out that
Yesterday I stopped by the cafeteria at my daughter’s school here in the District of Columbia–H.D. Cooke Elementary–and this is what many of the kids were having for breakfast: A package of sugar-glazed cookies called Kellogg’s Crunchmania Cinnamon buns; chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk; grape juice.
A 1.76-ounce packet of Crunchmania contains 13 grams of sugar, or 3 tespoons. Chocolate milk packs 26 grams of sugar, somewhat more than 6 teaspoons. And the grape juice delivers 18 grams of sugar in a little four-ounce container, another four-plus teaspoons. Altogether, that’s more than 13 teaspoons of nutritionally worthless sugar first thing in the morning, courtesy of the public school system and its food service provider, Chartwells.
I came across one boy actually dipping the cookies into his chocolate milk. All further proof that you can pack school “foods” with “nutrition” at the factory, and still come up with products that have no business being served to children on a daily basis at school, especially in a city that has the highest concentration of adolescent obesity in the country.
As Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. was recently quoted here as saying children have only a few “discretionary calories” to spend on sugary food. “So, my professional feeling is that discretionary calories (added sugar, fat) should be eaten at home, not at school. I am in favor of schools focusing on providing key nutrients to children at school and not getting into the business of providing them with ‘treats.’”
Come, be a part of connecting community, culture and food in Columbia Heights this summer.
The Columbia Heights Community Marketplace kicks off its inaugural season the first weekend of June 2010 at one of the neighborhood’s key commercial, cultural and social hubs: the plaza and fountain at the intersection of 14th Street, Kenyon Street and Park Road in Northwest D.C., one block from the Columbia Heights Metro, and across the street from a major shopping center, eateries and the Tivoli Theater.
The various aspects and components of the Columbia Heights Community Marketplace, including the farmers market, arts, entertainment and services, will show the key role that locally and sustainably grown food has in connecting, celebrating and strengthening community and culture.
But your help is needed to make the Columbia Heights Community Marketplace experience the best possible. Please take a few moments to complete a survey that seeks your help and ideas about a number of issues related to the market schedule and which activities, foods and services you would like to see available. For example, your input will help decide which day and hours the market should operate.
Finally, D.C. Public Schools appear to be getting serious about reforming school food.
You wouldn’t know it from Ed Bruske’s recent six-part series detailing the processed and sugar-injected foods currently being served in the city’s schools. But schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to be getting the picture. Two weeks ago she appointed a new director of School Food Services to make some serious changes in school cafeterias across the District. It’s a position that was unfilled since the previous director was fired a year ago.
The new appointee, Jeffrey Mills, comes from the restaurant industry in New York. After doing some contracted work for D.C. Public Schools a year ago, he embraced the idea of school food reform and specifically the Michelle Obama-Alice Waters vision of school gardens and local foods as a way to address children’s health and education issues.
Jeff is working on a strategic plan to transform school meals in the District into a model of healthfulness and sustainability. As best I can tell, he has a green light from Rhee’s office to map out a cost-effective means of getting there.
DC’s Field to Fork Network includes dozens of organizations working in Washington, DC to foster regional change in how we approach our food. Members of the Network represent urban gardeners, farmers’ markets, distribution co-operatives, food banks, local government agencies, academic institutions, nutrition educators, community organizers, and cooks – our work encompasses everything between a gardener’s or farmer’s field and your fork!
Sounds a little bit like the DC Food for All, eh? The difference is that the Field to Fork Network is focused specifically on urban agriculture. Further, the Field to Fork website will be less focused on the local food news and city policy analysis you’ve come to expect from the DC Food for All, and more a space for you to learn how to get your hands dirty – literally. That said, we’re in this food movement together and we’ll be building a strong partnership between the two resources.
Organization as a Network will strengthen the linkages between community gardening, food preparation, and nutritional outreach, resulting in a “field to fork” network that will:
encourage the use of underutilized green space within the District for agriculture,
support diversity, abundance, affordability thus, consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables,
expand health and economic benefits by increasing access to fresh produce, and
engage participants and volunteers in outreach and educational opportunities throughout the year.
2010 marks the third year that many of these organizations have collaborated to put on Rooting DC, an annual day-long forum for urban gardeners. (To find out more and to support the conference, come out to the Rooting DC Happy Hour fundraiser tonight at Commonwealth Gastropub. 3rd annual Rooting DC tonight.)
Throughout the year, Rooting DC coordinators have written monthly email newsletters outlining upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and workshops put on by the partners. Now in creation of the Field to Fork Network website, this information will be easily organized and accessible on-demand at www.fieldtoforknetwork.org!
Use this website to
gather resources for gardeners,
find upcoming volunteer opportunities in urban ag projects,
learn about upcoming workshops,
find info on bringing a wider of diversity of crops to your gardening community,
get recipes for local seasonal produce, or
just stay up to date on DC’s field to fork news.
We hope you will find this website a valuable resource as we grow over the course of the next few months. Please feel free to make suggestions for what additional information or resources ought to be included, by emailing us at DCFieldtoFork@gmail.com
One of the most disturbing things I saw during the week I spent in the kitchen at my daughter’s elementary school recently was all the sugar being served to children. From the Pop Tarts and Apple Jacks on the breakfast line, to the fruit juice, the chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk on constant display, to the fruit mix in “light syrup” offered with lunch, sugar is ever-present at H.D. Cooke Elementary. So it is in most public schools.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about all the birthdays and other celebrations and even everyday events where cookies and cakes and candy are commonly dished out at school. At a recent “family game night” at H.D. Cooke, every table had bowls of Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses for the taking. Sources for sugar seem to be everywhere, all the time: You can hardly spend an evening with the family without a dose of sugar.
In the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic, is it time to stand up to sugar and the empty calories it represents? According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the rate of adolescent obesity in the District is the highest in the nation. Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler–who has battled his own weight issues–argues in a best-selling book embraced by Michelle Obama’s policy team that Americans are fat because they’re addicted to convenience foods laced with fat, salt, sugar. Should schools be enabling an addiction to sugar?
[UPDATE: time and room change!] A hearing on the Healthy Schools Act of 2009 will be held on Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:00AM in room 500Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building located at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. To sign up to testify contact Aukima Benjamin at the DC Council: ABenjamin@DCCOUNCIL.US or (202)724-8062
Like most of the food movement folks in DC who are concerned with community food security and its relationship with public health, I am very excited about the Healthy Schools Act of 2009 that is winding its way through the DC Council’s legislative process. Improving school cafeteria nutrition is long overdue, as are the physical exercise provisions. This bill is a great first step and has the potential to positively impact DC schools and the children who grow up here. I plan to testify in support of the bill at the hearing on February 9th and I encourage others to join me!
However there are areas where I see the need for improvement. One of these has to do with the lack of measures to enable District food enterprises to really take advantage of the farm to school provisions. In other states, farm-to-school initiatives have created significant demand for produce grown by the states’ own farmers.
In a sense, this element is lacking in the Healthy Schools Act as proposed. Why? Well, DC has few farmers.
This, though, can be remedied by amending the Act to specifically cite the decades old DC law–the “Food Production and Urban Garden Program” (DC Code §48-402).
“My bill will see to it that students are eating fresh healthy food in school cafeterias throughout the District”–Mary Cheh
By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor
D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) has introduced landmark “Healthy Schools” legislation that integrates nutrition standards, locally produced foods, school gardening, broader access to subsidized meals and increased physical exercise to address obesity and other children’s health issues in the nation’s capitol. I recently submitted 34 written questions to Cheh about her bill, resulting in this interview by e-mail. The questions were submitted before I reported a six-part account of the food being served in D.C. schools.
QUESTION: What [...]
As one of the teachers involved with Michelle Obama and the White House vegetable garden, I’ve been impressed with the sudden surge of public interest in the simple act of children planting seeds. At Bancroft Elementary School, where I work first and foremost as an art teacher, we know only too well the benefits children get from growing their own food.
The kids you see in all the photos working with the First Lady in the White House garden, or making breakfast on the Today Show with the Obamas’ chef, Sam Kass, are fifth graders from my school. One of the reasons I chose to work at Bancroft two years ago was its garden. I had just moved back to the Washington area from South Carolina where I grew things pretty much all year round in my own yard. With visions of sunflowers and big tomato plants dancing in my head, I signed up for a community garden plot in D.C. But the waiting list was long. The idea of living without a patch of dirt to play in was hard to swallow.
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[UPDATE: time and room change!] A hearing on the Healthy Schools Act of 2009 will be held on 