Success Stories - Teachers & Schools
St. Louis Students Celebrate Second Year of Let's Move
Dozens of St. Louis elementary school students kicked off the second year of Let’s Move! with a dancing, stretching, and stepping celebration at Ford Community Education and Full Service School.
Snow Days Don’t Deter New England School from Healthy School Meals
After a cold and snowy month of school closings, the sun shone on February 10, just in time to present eight elementary schools in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with Bronze awards in the HealthierUS School Challenge.
A School and Community with Distinction
When First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the School Nutrition Association last year to promote her recently launched Let’s Move! Initiative, she mentioned Anji Baumann by name. Why? Anji was the first Food Service Director in the nation whose school, Gooding Elementary School, had achieved the HealthierUS School Challenge Gold of Distinction Award.
A Wellness Community Achieves the HealthierUS School Challenge
On a sunny October morning at Columbia School in El Monte, California, Allen Ng, our Regional Administrator at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service presented El Monte City School District with the first HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC) Awards in California since the Challenge joined the Let’s Move! initiative one year ago.
Chef Inspired, Kid Approved
I had the distinct pleasure to join the White House Assistant Chef and Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiative Sam Kass, to participate in a unique Chefs Move to Schools event at Edgewater High School Auditorium, Orlando, Fla., in celebration of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative.
Get Involved with the Summer Food Service Program in your Community
The two most direct ways to get involved in the Summer Food Service Program in your community are to either become a sponsor or a feeding site. What’s the difference you may ask? Being a sponsor means acting as the organizer for Summer Food Service sites. Sponsors manage, train, supervise and monitor all food service activities and locations where children can eat. They also maintain paperwork and submit claims for reimbursement.
Winning the Future: Fuel Up to Fight Obesity
Today I had the honor of joining some of our nation’s principal thought-leaders at the site of Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, Texas, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that outlines an unprecedented private-public partnership committed to child health and wellness. The co-signers included myself, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NDC CEO Thomas Gallagher and Gen YOUth Foundation CEO Alexis Glick. During the event, I unveiled a new television public service announcement (PSA) featuring a local favorite, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, that encourages youth to participate in the Fuel Up to Play 60 program. The PSA was developed by the Ad Council in collaboration with Let’s Move!, USDA, NFL, NFL Player Association, and National Dairy Council, and will be distributed to stations nationwide this week.
Celebrating Washington, DC’s first Gold Award of Distinction in USDA’s HealthierUS School Challenge
I had the pleasure of celebrating the top notch achievement of the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School as USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon and District of Columbia State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley presented this great school with a HealthierUS School Challenge Gold Award of Distinction. The award represents the highest honor a school can achieve in the Challenge and they couldn’t have done it without the committed leadership and staff at this special school. This school is truly a role model and the award puts them on the map as the first school in the nation’s capital to earn the Gold Award of Distinction. E.W. Stokes is a diverse pre-school and elementary school providing instruction in two languages. Their unwavering commitment to sharing the benefits of physical activity and making good food choices is evident in everything they do!
Hunger Doesn’t Take a Summer Vacation, and neither does the Riverside Unified School District
Riverside Unified School District (RUSD) Nutrition Services Director, Rodney Taylor, knows the face of hunger in his community. On a daily basis, Rodney’s team serve lunch to about 34,000 RUSD kids, 61 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced price meals. While the RUSD staff offer these students a fresh, healthy, nutritious meal during the school year, where do students eat during the summer? In previous years, many students ate lunch at summer school. However, steep budget cuts in 2008 and 2009 forced many school districts, including RUSD, to drastically reduce their summer school sites to only three schools, leaving about 25,000 kids without a place to eat. Without the summer school program, where would those kids eat? That is where the RUSD's summer barbeques come in.
Success Story: "Mother Of Many" Partners With Los Angeles High Schools
It all began in 2008 when I saw how much fun students from Dorsey High School’s Culinary Arts Program had preparing healthy meals for election volunteers. As the founder and Executive Director of the non‐profit educational organization, Mother Of Many (M.O.M.), I decided to partner with Dorsey’s culinary instructor Erevetta Marzette in 2009 and created the student‐produced “Cooking Live With Dorsey High,” a WebTV healthy food series. Inspiring a move towards healthy cooking and eating seemed completely possible within one school. I never imagined, however, that Cooking Live with Dorsey High would bring rival high schools together in the spirit of “healthy eating!”
