A Joint Project of the Center for Ecoliteracy and Teachers College Columbia University
     
  Across the nation, schools and school districts are looking for ways to link fresh, healthy, school meals to the learning experience of students. "Rethinking Food, Health, and the Environment" includes two professional development institutes and set of curriculum materials that connect improved school food to the classroom science education and to instructional gardens and kitchen classrooms.

This linkage between curriculum and an enriched school environment is designed to provide consistent, positive messages throughout the school community and greatly improves students’ potential for health, academic achievement, and student understanding about the natural world.

Apply now for the Summer 2008 Professional Development Institutes:
June 23-27, 2008 in San Anselmo, California (this session has been completed)
August 9-13, 2008 in New York, New York

 

This joint project is based on the long-standing work of the Center for Ecoliteracy on school food issues and curriculum integration and of Teachers College Columbia University on curriculum related to food, health and the environment.

After a decade of working with schools on issues of food and curriculum, the Center for Ecoliteracy developed Rethinking School Lunch (RSL). RSL is a comprehensive planning framework for changing food in schools and connecting classroom studies with hands-on experiences in school gardens, kitchen classrooms, and cafeterias. For more information on RSL, visit the Center for Ecoliteracy.

Since the 1970s the Teachers College Program in Nutrition has been interested in teaching people to make food choices that are healthy for their bodies and healthy for the planet. In the 1990s the Programs in Nutrition and Science Education at Teachers College began working together to develop the Linking Food and the Environment (LiFE) Curriculum Series. LiFE is an inquiry- and reform-based science and nutrition curriculum to help students develop scientific habits of mind through learning about food and food, systems and how our food choices impact both our personal health and ecological sustainability. For more information on LiFE, visit the Center for Food & Environment at Teachers College.

For additional information on this project please contact us via email.

 

Rethinking Food, Health, and the Environment, supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, offers resources for innovation in school food services, integrating curricula around common experiences and concepts, and connecting schools with farms, their communities, and the environment.

Research and development of Rethinking School Lunch and publication of the RSL guide were supported with grants from The California Endowment and the USDA Community Food Security Grants Program.

LiFE is supported by a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

 

 

 

 

 
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