A Recipe for Success: The Farm to School Institute Creates Lasting Change

A Recipe for Success The Farm to School Institute Creates Lasting Change in Cafeterias, Classrooms & Communities

introduction

Farm to School

COMMUNITY

Growing Whole-School Systems Change

FARM TO SCHOOL CAFETERIA

Farm to school is more than a movement to increase access to local, healthy food. It is an opportunity to create change across a school community in support of healthy students and local food systems.

Farm to school programs help students develop a positive relationship with food and take action to support a more just food system. They support local farmers and producers and have a positive impact on the local economy. They provide opportunities for hands-on, place-based learning and foster meaningful connections between schools, families, and community partners.

CLASSROOM

The 3Cs of Farm to School Vermont FEED’s (VT FEED) farm to school model is based on connecting 3Cs: Classrooms, Cafeterias, and Communities. Developed in 2000, the 3Cs model is a whole-school, integrated model of change that connects the dots across the school community to embed a culture of farm to school, thus supporting program sustainability.

CLASSROOMS provide real-life context for learning across disciplines—science, math, art, language arts, social studies, and more. Engaging, hands-on opportunities, such as planting community gardens, visiting local farms, and cooking food from scratch, extend learning into the community and cafeteria.

CAFETERIAS support the local economy by purchasing fresh, seasonal foods from local farmers.

These foods become ingredients in healthy, nutritious meals that are accessible to all students. Taste tests and cooking lessons introduce students to new foods and empower them to make healthy choices.

COMMUNITIES provide valuable farm to school connections. Farm visits teach students where their food comes from. Community dinners, servicelearning projects, and harvest festivals involve families and community members in building a food culture committed to healthy, sustainable choices.

Vermont FEED’s Farm to School Institute: Accelerating Whole-School Systems Change VT FEED’s Farm to School Institute is a unique, whole-school professional development model that builds capacity in school communities to create a culture of wellness, improve food access, engage students, and strengthen local food systems. Since 2010, the Institute has been bringing school and community teams together to build relationships and skills, as well as create a collaborative action plan for their schools.

With the support of a coach, these teams spend the next year putting their plans into action and strengthening their capacity to impact classrooms, cafeterias, and communities.

The Institute’s model of team building, action planning, and coaching accelerates whole-school systems' change to create robust, sustainable farm to school programs that become deeply embedded in a school’s culture, making change that lasts.

Key Institute Components the 3c approach

whole-school teams

experienced coaches

action planning

Impactful farm to school programs connect classrooms, cafeterias, and communities. The Institute is structured around this 3C model of change, ensuring an integrated and connected program that shifts school culture toward wellness and strengthens school-community partnerships.

People with diverse roles in a school make up each team: nutrition staff, parents, teachers, administrators, nurses, and community partners.

Team members leave prepared to support one another, integrate activities and learning schoolwide, and build shared leadership and capacity for the long haul.

Each team is paired with an experienced coach who helps the team develop and implement its action plan, troubleshoot, connect with resources, and maintain accountability. Teams also have access to experts on farm to school topics, from scratch cooking and local procurement to funding and communications.

Custom action plans are the heart of the Institute experience.

Each team assesses its school’s strengths and opportunities, then creates an integrated action plan that builds on those strengths.

Teams learn to set goals, track progress, communicate success, and adapt to changing conditions.

key findings

Informing Program Sustainability A Retrospective Evaluation of the Farm to School Institute In 2021, PEER Associates completed a retrospective evaluation of VT FEED’s Farm to School Institute with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service. Interviews were conducted with twenty participants to get their perspectives on what factors support robust and sustainable farm-to-school programs and how these were strengthened by their team’s participation in the Institute.

The following summarizes select findings from those interviews organized around three overarching themes:

Strengthening Organizational Capacity Fostering a Culture of Farm to School Sustaining an Ongoing Commitment

key findings: one

Strengthening Organizational Capacity Robust and sustainable farm-to-school programs require resources, infrastructure, leadership, and collaboration among key stakeholders —administrators, food-service staff, teachers, students, families, and community partners. VT FEED’s Farm to School Institute builds capacity and agency through relationship building across roles, the process of action planning, skill building, and connections to resources.

Strong interdisciplinary teams are the glue that holds farm to school programs together. The Institute’s focus on whole-school teams forges relationships among team members and strengthens the team’s collective capacity to work together. Participants find they are better informed about their team members’ roles and responsibilities, which facilitates decision-making and strategic planning.

Custom action plans are a defining element of the Institute experience. The Institute helps teams acquire foundational action planning skills and develop a shared vision for the work. Participants appreciate the attention that is given to building leadership capacity for program implementation, as well as the capacity for teams to work collaboratively to identify what needs to be done and when and how to best allocate resources Access to human and financial resources can make or break a farm to school program. At the Institute, teams are paired with experienced coaches who, over the next twleve months, help them develop and implement their action plans, troubleshoot,make connections, and maintain accountability. According to participants, coaches provide a much needed boost in capacity, which buys teams time to embed farm to school coordination and duties in an existing position.

The Institute also enables teams to build connections with other schools and community partners and connects schools with funding resources that can support one-time costs for infrastructure in the kitchen, classroom, and/or schoolyard.

what particpants are saying “The institute model brings school staff together outside of a school building in a space set up for action planning, longterm thinking, and developing relationships, without interruption.

It’s been successful in developing teams that can spread curriculum and programs throughout the entire building.”

“I really feel the process of creating the action plan has benefitted us throughout. We refer to it over and over, we add to it.

We check things off and we put new things on the list. And we kind of follow that process.”

"[I appreciated] the extensive team/coach time in which our coach could help guide our group, offer feedback when asked, and share personal experience. We were lucky to have such an experienced coach who could keep us on track as we worked through the goal setting and action plan."

“We got so much information from the Farm to School Institute.

We're seeing in the Burlington school system the things that we were taught. This can be done, this is happening in other places, and we can start to replicate that where we are. We took a lot of ideas from [the Institute].”

what particpants are saying “If you have [farm to school] embedded in your school culture, then you can lose any one person, any one key person, and it's still there.”

“Students have built a community action event that seeks to both raise awareness and address food waste and food insecurity.

They're in the driver's seat, having those conversations with community members. Having young people be at the forefront and be the ones leading those conversations, they’re creating necessary change. We see all of this as a way to get out into the neighborhood and have students engage the community."

“What I found so valuable about [the Institute] was listening to what was being done in other schools, particularly in Vermont, and… really connecting with colleagues from other school systems and hearing about their struggles and how they used this program effectively in their school system.”

key findings: two

Fostering a Culture of Farm to School Rooting farm to school into a school’s identity bolsters its staying power and value, which can lead to long-term, systemic impacts on school culture. VT FEED’s Farm to School Institute fosters a culture of farm to school by promoting its alignment with school priorities; building skills to boost its visibility; and cultivating believers and champions within the school community.

Successful farm-to-school programs align with the many dimensions of school culture, including goals, values, norms, policies, and traditions. The Institute helps teams piece together how farm to school fits into the culture of their schools. This includes everything from integrating farm to school into schoolwide priorities like student wellness and equity, to considering farm to school in policies and day-to-day decisions, to ensuring farm to school is integrated within the curriculum.

Schools that embrace a culture of farm to school make their commitment visible for everyone to see. Farm to school’s visibility is especially evident when it is integrated across the 3Cs. The Institute uses the 3Cs approach to help teams connect the dots between what happens in cafeterias, classrooms, and communities to make that integration possible and ensure farm-to-school values are adopted schoolwide. Participants credit the Institute with helping them plan activities, such as harvest festivals, dinners, and community celebrations, that put farm to school front and center for everyone to see.

Farm to school programs cannot rely on one or two champions to be sustainable in the long run. They need champions and believers to thrive and survive. This is one reason why the Institute takes a whole-team approach to farm to school. It gets people at multiple levels and in different areas of the school engaged.

The Institute also provides teams with examples of what a welldeveloped program looks like. This is often an “aha” moment for many participants. The more people who see and believe in the value of the work, the more likely farm to school will be an enduring part of a school’s culture.

key findings: three

Sustaining an Ongoing Commitment The work to promote and sustain farm to school programs is never done. It takes dedicated resources, people, and partners to ensure successful programs endure for the long haul. VT FEED’s Farm to School Institute helps teams sustain an ongoing commitment to farm to school by creating buy-in and build-in within the school community, applying their knowledge and skills, and building relationships.

The most successful farm to school programs are co-created by a diverse cross-section of the school community. This ensures buy-in for the vision and value of farm to school and build-in of capacity and commitment to support program implementation. Participants often cite the Institute with helping them cultivate a shared sense of responsibility and personal commitment to farm to school. For example, school administrators who attended the Institute were more likely to assume an active role in promoting and participating in farm to school activities.

Building capacity to implement farm to school programs is incredibly important. Just as important is using that newly acquired knowledge and skills to sustain your program. The Institute’s focus on creating an action plan helps teams track their progress and identify areas where more training or resources might be needed. It also holds team members accountable for their contributions to and leadership in program implementation.

Above all, sustainable farm to school programs are possible thanks to relationships—within the school community and with likeminded schools and community partners. Positive relationships are foundational to positive school culture, and trust in these relationships sets the stage for a school culture that embraces farm to school. The Institute helps teams build relationships among themselves and other teams by giving them opportunities to connect on a personal level and share stories and best practices. When teams meet each other and see there are others just like them out there working on the same goals, it helps normalize farm to school and instill it in their school’s culture.

what particpants are saying “The best thing that came out of it was we got teachers and an administrator on board.

Whatever we're doing, he's always 100% supportive.

And I think the role he played [at the Institute] helped make that happen. I don't think he would have really understood what we were trying to do and why it mattered had he not listened to all the other groups and all the speakers.”

“The year after we came back with that [FTS action plan], the school board rewrote the vision and mission and included the stewardship language in the mission of the school.”

“The Institute model is really useful in bringing school staff together outside of a school building in a space set up for action planning, long-term thinking, and developing those relationships. You don’t have interruptions, like school bells ringing every 40 minutes. I’ve seen that be really successful in developing teams, which then go into their schools and spread curriculum and programs—and not just within a small team of five educators, but throughout the entire building.”

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THE FARM TO SCHOOL INSTITUTE IS A PROGRAM OF Vermont FEED (food education every day) is a farm to school partnership project of Shelburne Farms Institute for Sustainable Schools and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT). These two nonprofits have more than forty years of experience in farm to school, supporting teachers, school nutrition staff, farmers, and administrators. vtfeed.org Shelburne Farms is an education nonprofi t on a mission to inspire and cultivate learning for a sustainable future through its programs, place, and products. We offer transformative learning experiences to help educators, students, and visitors create a more thriving world. Home to the Institute for Sustainable Schools, our historic campus is a 1,400-acre diversified farm located on the homelands of the Winooskik band of the Abenaki. shelburnefarms.org The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) is an association of farmers, gardeners, and consumers, promoting an economically viable and ecologically sound Vermont food system for the benefit of current and future generations. nofavt.org