FoodPrints School Year Wraps Up With Joy and Learning

This FoodPrints school year, students across the city engaged in more than 2,600 sessions of joyful, hands-on learning in kitchen classrooms and school gardens. Students deepened their connections to nutritious, local food by tearing kale for a fresh salad, digging in the soil to plant seeds, holding worms to learn more about decomposers, and cooking alongside their families. These experiences in FoodPrints helped students increase their consumption of nutritious foods and brought delicious FoodPrints recipes into students’ homes. Moreover, FoodPrints classes supported academic learning and helped students cultivate a lasting appreciation for the natural world. Thank you to our 28 educators, 21 school communities, and 8,000 students for a school year full of joy and learning! 

Here are four stories that capture a school year full of excitement, wonder, and tasty bites:

Cooking and Eating Local, Nutritious Foods

At Marie Reed Elementary School, students are buzzing with chatter as they wait for a bowl of Kale Caesar Salad that they helped to prepare. Sophia, who is usually very quiet, came up to the teacher at the end of class and whispered, “it was really good.”

At Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, a student grins as she carefully chops up crunchy cabbage and carrots for Pasta Salad with Ginger Soy Dressing. As students eat together, one calls out, “There are so many colors in here! It’s like we’re eating the rainbow!”

Evaluation of the FoodPrints program demonstrates that students in the program are highly willing to try new foods unlike the average elementary student; regularly involved in food preparation at home; and loved or liked the program, emphasizing delicious food, trying new things, and learning cooking skills.

Building Appreciation for the Natural World

Hands full of soil, a student at Kimball Elementary School digs up a sweet potato from the ground, her eyes wide with surprise at its size! She is excited that after these potatoes cure she will be able to cook and eat them with her classmates.

At C.W. Harris Elementary School, a student uses his magnifying glass to study a garlic scape up close. He gets really close to it and declares that it “smells spicy!”

In their school gardens, students have time to wander and make discoveries. They foster a love for the garden and begin seeing it as a living system they can care for.

The FoodPrints Garden Team manages over 6,000 square feet of growing space and the production of over 30 unique crops for students to care for, harvest, and eat. 

Exploring Academics through Real World Experiences

In the John Francis Education Campus garden, a student crouches beside a row of carrots and carefully measures the height of the leafy green tops, then jots down numbers on his clipboard. The FoodPrints teacher notes, “Students were quite eager to go around the garden measuring, especially when I told them they could taste things as they went along.  Many students tried (and loved) broccoli leaves for the first time!” 

During another class at John Francis, a few students carefully touch a wiggling worm that they find in the soil. These students are learning about the importance of caring for living things and their habitats by actively observing and engaging in the garden.

There are 63 hands-on, interdisciplinary lessons in the FoodPrints Curriculum tied to academic and food education standards.

Sharing Delicious & Nutritious Recipes with the Whole Family

At Simon Elementary School, kids and grown-ups chop and stir side-by-side at a family cooking night. A student proudly watches his mom and dad take a bite of the Kale Caesar Salad and Herb Garlic Bread they made together.

At Burroughs, students host families at a FoodPrints table at an Earth Day event. They call out to parents to try their Pasta Salad with Ginger Soy Dressing. Through FoodPrints, school communities—students, parents, and staff—come together around the joy of cooking and eating.

The FoodPrints program connects with the parents and families of our students to center community voices to broaden the reach of food education, innovate our approach, and shape our programming.

With the success of our 19th year of programming and our largest reach into DC communities to date, we look forward to continued partnership with city leaders, DC Public Schools, and individual school communities to maintain our reach and impact of joyful food education tied to academics across Washington, DC.