Tucson official touts benefits of school gardens to fight kids’ hunger – Cronkite News

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Community and School Garden Program supporters in Tucson say that not only does it provide fresh, healthy food, but gardening improves children’s mental health and teaches teamwork. (Photo courtesy of the community and the school garden program)

WASHINGTON – Moses Thompson didn’t get very far years ago when he went door-to-door as part of his work in the Tucson Unified School District to ask parents about absent students.

That was in front of the gardens.

“When we started the program, we didn’t raid any parents because those parents were at school and redesigned the schoolyard,” said Thompson, who now leads the community and school garden program at 18 schools in the district.

He joined lawyers from across the country on Wednesday to speak at a House Rules Committee round table on how schools can help fight hunger in children, with programs ranging from gardens to culinary programs to simple socializing .

“One in six children in America went to bed hungry and woke up hungry at some point during the year,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Chairman of the committee. “Remember, every sixth child in this country doesn’t know where their next meal will come from. It’s just wrong.

“So we can understand each other. Schools are the backbone of efforts to end child hunger in this country and for many children they are the only place where they can reliably get a healthy, nutritious meal all day,” McGovern said in his opening speech.

However, witnesses at the hearing said that providing meals for the students was only the first step. Schools need to ensure that they also offer healthy meals.

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“It should be a birthright in this country, one of the richest in the world, that every child has access to healthy food every day and that no child is ever hungry,” said Ann Cooper, founder of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit organization. promotes scratch cooking in schools.

The Arizona Department of Education announced last week the Creating Your Kitchen program in partnership with the Chef Ann Foundation to “help schools work, exceed standards and provide healthy, nutritious meals to their students”. The initiative aims to help schools offer more fresh food instead of pre-packaged and pre-prepared meals.

“Over the past year it has become clear to everyone that one of our school’s most important services is delivering healthy, nutritious meals to every student,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman said in a statement accompanying the program’s announcement.

The past year presented school nutrition with new challenges. During the pandemic, many students lost “the most stable place in their lives” when their schools closed, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of Schoolhouse Connection.

“Schools are not only the best, but often the only source of food and support some students receive,” Duffield said during the round table.

While schools were closed, the Tucson district shifted to take out lunch. But the work of the Community and School Garden Program, which Thompson runs in partnership with the University of Arizona, didn’t stop there.

The program, which focuses on Title I schools and low-income communities, said £ 350 of product was harvested in the 2020-2021 school year. The products were included in the district’s take-away lunches, and any food that was not used in the school canteen was donated to families and employees who needed it.

While food-insecure students can rely on hot meals at school after they resume classroom teaching, Duffield said it is important for schools to identify the students who are most dependent on school meals and provide them with additional support.

In Arizona, 311,390 children face food insecurity, according to the Arizona Food Bank Network. But Thompson said helping children with food is just one of the benefits of the gardening program.

The program works with schools to “promote cooperation, autonomy and social justice,” it says on its website. It also helps “teachers introduce students to the ‘real world’ application of what they are learning in the classroom.”

When schools closed from the pandemic, the Tucson Community and School Gardening Program sent products home for lunch or distributed them to local families. (Photo courtesy of the community and the school garden program)

Thompson, a former counselor at Manzo Elementary School, used his interest in gardening to step out of his office and teach children how to work together.

School gardens “are places to practice mindfulness and emotional self-regulation and places to connect meaningfully with other people,” Thompson said.

There are other benefits, said Cooper, who saw the impact school gardens had on students during 11 years as the food services director in Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District.

“School gardens are an essential part of getting children to eat healthy,” said Cooper. “When they grow the food, they eat the food.”

This was confirmed by Thompson, who said, “The way we eat affects how we feel, and the way we feel affects how we eat.”

Despite the ongoing challenges, Thompson is optimistic.

“It’s important to remember that these are man-made problems,” he said of childhood hunger. “But there are man-made solutions for all of these things that feel impossible.”

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