"What did you bring for us to try today?"
This is the question I'm asked by my students in every class that I teach nutrition lessons. Tastings are brought throughout the school year for students to try new, healthy foods. It is the goal of UC CalFresh to give different types of tastings that come from the five food group on MyPlate for the students to sample. During the school year, I would always reference MyPlate with the tastings that the students were getting for that month. This gives them an idea which food group each tasting belongs to.
Many teachers created nutrition corners based on the different tastings the students tried during this school year. One of the teachers who did so was Mrs. Thao at Bakman Elementary. Mrs. Thao went over the tastings with the students and then posted pictures of each tasting on the nutrition corner to remind the students of the great foods they were able to try through the UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program. Each time I visited Mrs. Thao's classroom, the students would remind me of what food they tasted, and tell me how much they enjoyed it or didn't enjoy it. Of course, all of the feedback from the students is great to help us improve our tastings for them to try in the future.
I've enjoyed talking with my students this year about the foods they were able to try. It's always exciting to see students try new foods, which leaves me with my own question:
"What will we bring for them to try next time?"