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Professional Development Workshops
Farm to School Lunch tray - Thursday June 4, 2026 11AM - 12:30PM EST
NYC DOE Professional Development Online Synchronous Course
Title: Farm to School Lunch Tray:
Dates: Tuesday November 4, 2025 from 10 AM - 11:30 AM EST. This is a 1.5-hour synchronous online course open exclusively to Department of Education teachers, administrators and staff.
Facilitators: Jill Santopietro, founder of the Children’s Food Lab
Audience: Target audience is teachers Grades K-8. All staff and administrators are welcome!
Description: This course brings together a series of practices that focus on building food literacy - reinforcing wellness and mindfulness. In this interactive workshop, participants will engage in hands-on activities to bring back to the classroom that integrate food, nutrition, wellness, mindfulness, and literacy. Participants will leave with ideas for grade-level lessons that connect to food, environment and wellness, understanding of simple strategies to bring healthy food preparation into the classroom.
Course Objectives:
To consider the benefits of using mindful, wellness-based practices to teach food literacy
To introduce participants to high-quality wellness practices for mindful food literacy education that can be incorporated across disciplines
To discuss what equity considerations are important in utilizing mindfulness-based wellness practices around food and consider ways to ensure content addresses these considerations
To introduce methods for teaching thoughtful approaches to nutrition decision-making
To build tools for creating a full-body approach to food literacy
This course draws from practices utilized in programming for The Children’s Food Lab led by Jill Santopietro, including lessons around taste, smell, and mindful making, which have been implemented across dozens of youth audiences in school-based and after school programming. Jill draws from these first-hand experiences, as well as best practices for restorative wellness, throughout the course.
The target audience for this course is any NYC DOE educator interested in mindful wellness-based approaches for integrating literacy, food/nutrition literacy, and wellness in the classroom.
JILL SANTOPIETRO is a food and nutrition educator, cooking instructor, food writer, and recipe developer. She is the founder and director of The Children’s FOOD LAB – offering fun, hands-on food arts and sciences discovery labs to New York and Massachusetts school children. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Bloomberg Pursuits, Epicurious.com and The Boston Globe, and she has worked on recipes for writers including Michael Pollan and Alex Guarneschelli. Prior to launching The Children’s FOOD LAB, Jill worked at The New York Times Magazine, where she co-created and hosted The New York Times’ "Kitchen 4B" video series. She is passionate about educating kids (and their families) and educators on all things food — how it grows, how it's processed, and the effects that has on us, our communities, and our environment. Jill has a master’s in food studies (gastronomy) from Boston University, is a member of the Tisch Food Center Food Ed Hub. www.jillsantopietro.com
The Children’s FOod Lab.
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