Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. In this episode we talk about early childhood education and its connection to farm to school and childhood nutrition with Sarah Tousignant, the Executive Director of the Mountain Village School in Stowe, Vermont. The Mountain Village School is a nature-based independent school for children, birth through kindergarten, with afterschool programs for children in kindergarten through fourth grade. The school believes that early childhood is a crucial aspect of an individual's development and that nature, community harmony and discovery are the most important attributes of early childhood.

Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. Today our focus is on early childhood education and its connection to farm to school and childhood nutrition. Hear from Maggie Lynch, RDN, Director of Nutrition Services, Karley Besozzi, Director of Nutrition Education, and Lindsey Bogot, Farm to School and Food Access Coordinator from the Metro West YMCA in Framingham, Massachusetts about ways to introduce and engage our youngest learners and eaters in farm to school practices.

Welcome to Farm to School Northeast, a podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. Today we have the chance to have all of our burning questions about trout answered by grade four students as we listen to their podcast called “Trout Tales”. But before that, we will get some background from educator Julia Marchessault, fourth grade teacher at Sustainability Academy in Burlington, Vermont. The Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes Elementary is a public pre-K to five magnet school in Burlington, Vermont that integrates sustainability into its curriculum. Created by the Burlington School District in partnership with Shelburne Farms, it is the first sustainability themed elementary school in the United States and focuses on real world projects like farmer's markets and community beautification. The project we are going to hear about today is called Trout Tales, a student-created podcast that celebrates the school's study of brook trout and the strong connection the schoolwide community built through this learning.