Breakfast club coordinator Siobhan Stewart and her team of committed volunteers start every day feeding 50-80 hungry students at St. George School in Westboro. Breakfast runs from 8:50 -9:15 and is open to anyone in the school. According to Siobhan, what makes breakfast such a success is that it is self-serve. Students can choose what they want and the volunteers help them serve themselves. Nothing is wasted. Hungry students are also able to take baggies of leftovers with them for lunch as some of the kids, Siobhan notes, don’t always bring lunch.

The menu rotates every week. Some days they have cereals, bagels, bread, jam. They also offer yoghurt, milk, cheese, eggs and fruit. Their most popular days are when they make fresh fruit smoothies.

Siobhan says that the support from the Ottawa Network for Education (ONFE)’s School Breakfast Program has been instrumental in keeping the program running. She has benefitted from the Coordinator Training Sessions offered by ONFE, an annual event that brings breakfast program coordinators together to review province-wide program guidelines and learn new tips. At one of these sessions, Siobhan learned from other coordinators that many programs serve fresh vegetables for breakfast. She tried it and was surprised by its popularity.

According to Siobhan, “without our team of parents and community volunteers this program would just not work so seamlessly. They all are fully committed to helping ensure all our students receive a healthy breakfast to start their day ready to learn.”

The breakfast club, Siobhan says, provides a social atmosphere that is safe and welcoming. Kids can sit together in multi-age groupings and eat a nutritional meal. They see volunteers preparing food for the breakfast club and learn about healthy food. Due to its wide catchment,  many kids are bussed to school. When the busses are late, Siobhan says they delay the breakfast program so those students have a chance at a healthy start to their day.

Students at St George School are also learning about growing and eating healthy food through the school tower gardens. The Ontario Network for Education’s Classroom Garden Program provided the school with two tower gardens along with operating instruction and curriculum linked programing ideas. Two student teachers, Stefanie Partridge and Allison Warren lead the program every Wednesday with six rotating students from the two grade 3 classes. The students are directly involved in maintaining the tower, checking the pH and adding nutrients and water. They also reap the benefits of their hard work by harvesting the tower when it is ready and using it to cook a yummy snack for the class. Last year, students made salad and pesto for pasta.

Story: Allegra Newman

Photos: Allison Warren

Renuka Darling, a grade four/five teacher at Regina Street Alternative, is passionate about bringing healthy school food to the students at her school.

Renuka’s own inspiration and drive were fueled by a talk she heard from Ottawa teacher Stephen Skoutajan about his own experience with a school garden at Devonshire Community Public School. A presentation by Jen Coorsh from Growing Up Organic at an OCDSB PD day event clinched it. Renuka immediately signed up for all the possible Growing Up Organic garden workshops for that year. Little did she know that other teachers at Regina Alternative were thinking the same way.

In the Spring of 2017, Regina Street Alternative began working with Growing Up Organic to design, build and install a garden with help from students from grades 3-6. Each grade was responsible for planting and taking care of their own garden bed. Through Growing Up Organic’s curriculum linked facilitated workshops, students learned about planning a garden, starting seeds, planting a salad garden and transplanting seedlings. In the Fall, through other workshops, they learn about how to save seeds for next year’s garden and the role of good soil in making a garden productive and healthy.

By June the salad garden at Regina Street Alternative was ready to harvest. The students picked salad greens and edible flowers and made and ate a delicious salad. Many of the students have little exposure to fresh vegetables at home and some were reluctant to try the salad. Others loved it and kept asking for more. Renuka sees the garden as an opportunity to promote healthy eating to students at the school.

In November, with help from the Growing Up Organic Program, Regina Alternative visited Roots and Shoots, a local farm. Growing Up Organic arranged for one grade to go on this trip but there was so much excitement throughout the entire school that a second bus was rented and it turned into a school-wide field trip.

At the farm, students learned all about farming as an occupation including: growing tomatoes and peppers in a greenhouse, extending the growing season, rotating fields and raising chickens. The kids who had been involved in the garden the previous year especially loved the field trip. They saw the link between their school garden and farming.

Back at school, the students took part in a Growing Up Organic seed saving workshop where they harvested nasturtium seeds. They were amazed at how many seeds you could harvest from each plant. One group of students was really impacted and imagined how one little seed could, in the future, become hundreds of plants.

Renuka says that programs like Growing up Organic have such a big impact because they are easy for busy teachers to implement. “Programs need to come without any extra work. With the Growing Up Organic program the teacher only has to choose the dates and Growing Up Organic brings everything.”

Renuka has many ideas for things she would like to do in the future around good food at her school. She says she wanted to “start small and see if everything is manageable.” Now that the garden is underway she has plans to use the garden produce to cook in the classroom and show kids how they can make simple meals. Regina Alternative also has plans to set up a garden tower so the students can grow food all year round. Renuka envisions growing basil and having the students make pesto that they could then take home for dinner to spread the knowledge from the students back to their families.

Regina Alternative teachers value giving their students the skills to grow and cook good food. This spring, Cultivating Cooks, led by Carley Schelck and Anna March, will host a series of inspiring workshops on healthy eating for the students at Regina Alternative. Cultivating Cooks teaches students to make good food choices through hands-on curriculum linked workshops.

Story: Allegra Newman

Photos: Renuka Darling