Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:During the 2018-19 program year, 29 FoodCorps AmeriCorps members served 90 schools serving children in grades K-8 in both rural and urban communities across Maine, Mississippi, and Oregon. Of these schools served, 36% are situated in rural communities, 31% in towns and suburbs, and 33% in cities. Across the schools served, 66% of the children served are eligible for subsidized meals, a strong proxy indicator for family poverty and food insecurity. During this project, FoodCorps AmeriCorps members reached 11,737 students directly through hands-on learning experiences across the communities served. ? Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?FoodCorps service members spent a week as a corps for national orientation in Portland, Oregon. During national orientation, members participated in workshops in topics such as community engagement, culturally responsive teaching, leading hands-on lessons in the classroom and the garden, understanding the school food system, and more. This training provides a foundation of knowledge and skills that additional training over the course of the service term builds upon to ultimately provide members with a holistic set of training to ensure members feel equipped with the knowledge, skills and resources to perform impactful service activities. Following national orientation, members returned to their service states where they participated in state orientation. Program Managers planned these trainings, leveraging local partners and experts in the field to ensure members receive a thorough training that orients members to the local school food and garden landscape, with an emphasis on engaging local farmers and producers, and school food service staff in service activities such as taste tests, farm field trips, and farmer visits, and digs deeper into developing the skills and knowledge needed to begin their service with confidence. Over the course of the term, Program Managers planned at least 2 additional state trainings. Program Managers conducted at minimum two in-person site visits to each service member over the course of the term. These visits are accompanied by the designated state team leader (a 2nd-year AmeriCorps service member) and offer the opportunity for observation and one-to-one coaching of each member. Structured around FoodCorps' Lesson Observation and Coaching Tool, these coaching sessions are designed to objectively assess teaching and classroom management skills and identify areas for improvement; The Program Manager and team leader can then provide coaching and resources specific to each member's unique needs. The state team leader conducts two additional coaching and observation visits to each member during the year. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?FoodCorps' intervention is aimed at changing both individuals and the broader school environment. As such, we set output and outcome targets for student attitude change (measured through a pre/post Vegetable Preference Survey, with targets set at 50% of students improving their attitudes, according to past program performance) as well as school food environment change (measured through the Healthy School Progress Report, which assesses school food environment change). We share these results annually with our site partners in the field, and more broadly through our annual report and communications shared via our e-newsletter (subscription count over 29,000), and on our website and social media channels which are widely followed. The full suite of FoodCorps Lessons was rolled out in full for the first time during the 2018-19 program year. FoodCorps partnered with Insight for Action to evaluate implementation of the FoodCorps Lessons, the results of which will support a quality improvement process undertaken by FoodCorps' program resources staff and consultants. Additionally, while the evaluation is centered around the use and experience of the FoodCorps Lessons, many of the themes and findings are broadly applicable to FoodCorps' programming as a whole, and the conditions for supporting successful hands-on learning in schools. The evaluation is based on data synthesized from weekly Reporting & Reflection Logs completed by service members, focus groups of service members and state team members, end of year surveys completed by service members, and Lessons feedback forms completed by service members. FoodCorps takes very seriously our motto to "build a better FoodCorps" every day. We apply this by soliciting feedback that we use to continue to refine and develop our program and resources to ensure we are providing the right training, resources, and support to our service members and site partners to deliver a program with meaningful impact. As we rolled out new and refined resources through the implementation of this project, like the Lesson Observation and Coaching Tool and the full suite of FoodCorps Lessons, our team has collected targeted feedback from service members, staff, and site partners to understand how effective and useful these tools are in the field, and how we can improve them for future use. We also collect feedback from members regarding the training they participate in, both at the national and state level, which is used to refine and improve future training that we offer. For example, as part of this project, service members in these states participated in training to ensure they had the knowledge, skills, and resources to implement activities that strengthen connections between farmers/producers and the communities we serve. To that end, we solicited feedback to understand the impact and effectiveness of this training. By hiring our state Program Managers in Maine, Mississippi and Oregon, we've enhanced our on-the-ground leadership and capacity to deepen the relationships critical to driving change at the school district and state level. In their respective states, our Program Managers not only manage a cadre of service members implementing a high-impact program, but also serve as leaders within each state's own farm to school, nutrition education, and service leadership communities seeking to advance our movement to support healthy food access for children at school. As such, the learnings from this project serve to benefit not only FoodCorps and the communities we serve directly, but also partners and stakeholders across the networks we are part of within each of these states. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
1. Deploy a Robust and Well-Supported Service Force: FoodCorps deployed 29 AmeriCorps members across Maine, Mississippi and Oregon to connect kids to healthy food in limited-resource public schools. Over the course of the 2018-19 program year, they collectively taught 408 classes to 11,737 students, supported 51 school gardens, held 252 taste tests, 143 cafeteria promotions of healthy foods, and recruited 578 unique volunteers to support service activities. State Program Managers followed a rigorous program management calendar over the course of the program year to ensure that the state program is managed to fidelity and quality, and service members and site partners are well-supported and -resourced to implement the program. This includes robust orientation and in-person trainings throughout the year, regular weekly touch points with service members and supervisors, site visits including member coaching, and ongoing monitoring of service sites to ensure program expectations are being met. Further information about the training provided to service members is described in answer to a forthcoming question in this report. In addition to ongoing support from the FoodCorps Program Manager, members receive daily supervision and support from their site supervisors. 2.Accelerate Impact with Teaching Innovations: For the 2018-19 program year, we rolled out enhanced resources to enable FoodCorps service members to deliver the highest possible quality lessons and hands-on learning experiences. We introduced our new full-suite of FoodCorps Lessons, and a new resource to enhance training and coaching of service members, our Lesson Observation and Coaching Tool program. From the recent evaluation of the FoodCorps Lessons, in partnership with an evaluation firm, Insight for Action, we've learned with a heartening key finding that service members rank FoodCorps Lessons among the most useful of available program resources. Additionally, service members, state teams, and teachers can and do take actions that are likely to result in the Lessons "sticking" after service members depart from service sites. This means FoodCorps' resources will continue to serve the communities into the future, beyond the tenure of a FoodCorps service member. Additional findings, related to the enablers and challenges service members face to plan, adapt, teach and debrief the lessons, will inform developments we will make to this curriculum to enhance enablers and minimize challenges to ensure service members of a range of experience levels are well-equipped to deliver the Lessons. Service members received enhanced one-to-one support through site visits. Having heard from the field that more training and technical assistance is needed to support classroom management and instruction skills, we developed the Lesson Observation and Coaching Tool program. Each member received four in-person visits over the course of the year, with coaching structured around the Tool to guide observation and individualized coaching designed to identify and address opportunities for improvement. 3.Increase Connections with Agriculture Producers: Across Maine, Mississippi and Oregon, FoodCorps service members were able to strengthen connections between local farmers and producers and their service communities. Across these three states, service members conducted 253 taste tests using local products, planned 80 farm/producer field trips, hosted 128 visits from farmers/producers, and otherwise had 279 interactions with farmers/producers to enhance their service activities. From Malia Demers, FoodCorps AmeriCorps member serving with RSU 71 in Belfast, Maine: "Thanks to a FoodCorps farm field trip grant, 3 of our grade levels at the school (139 kids!) visited a local farm and educational center. Hart to Hart Farm is an organic dairy producer in Albion, Maine." From Kelsey Ioannou, FoodCorps AmeriCorps member serving with Tupelo Public Schools in Tupelo, Mississippi: "Farmers from Native Son and Jones Family Farms came to visit at Sprout Scouts, and at almost all of the 10 Sprout Scouts meetings we had this month, we snacked on local produce from Native Son." From Julia Yost, FoodCorps AmeriCorps member serving with Food Roots in Tillamook, Oregon: "Took 45 first and second graders to Nehalem River Ranch for a farm field trip. They tasted locally grown veggies that we sourced from Moon River Farm and jerky from the ranch. I also did tastings during lessons using Moon River veggies."
Publications
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