South Hadley Office

From the Classroom to the Lunchroom

NEP’s school-based nutrition programs put kids on the fast track to a lifetime of health.

Can two days make a difference in the life of a child? Judging by the response to NEP’s nutrition workshops in Massachusetts public schools, the answer is a resounding yes.

Each year, elementary school students in Chicopee, Holyoke, and North Adams look forward to interactive lessons with Extension Nutrition Educator Saima Dizdaveric. And what’s not to love? Whether putting together a life-sized floor puzzle of a skeleton for a class on calcium and strong bones, or crushing a paper bag of potato chips into a slimy, fatty mess during a unit on heart health, students get to see for themselves how their everyday choices have a real-life effect on their growing bodies.

It’s clearly making a big impression. “Students tell me how they’ve stopped drinking sugary chocolate and strawberry milk,” says Dizdaveric. “Even the cafeteria workers chase me down and say, ‘There’s no more low-fat milk left because of you!’”

Students also report that they’re cutting down on other forms of “sometimes” foods, (foods high in fats and added sugars). And they’re becoming more open and adventurous when it comes to healthy choices. Dizdaveric has switched from her usual snack of apples to prunes, just to give kids a taste of something a bit less common. “When they see the prunes, they start making faces,” she recalls. “But then I ask them to touch them and smell them, and soon enough they’re saying, ‘I love this stuff. I’m going to buy this now.’”

The program works well in part because of its close and thoughtful collaboration with the schools’ classroom teachers, who use NEP’s carefully developed lesson plans to continue their students’ studies of nutrition throughout the year. Dizdaveric leaves teachers with two lessons in each of four nutritional categories, all of which help schools meet Massachusetts’ educational standards for math and science.  Because of this, teachers are more eager to use the plans and give students opportunities to learn critical information that they’re not likely to get from any other source.

“Teachers love it and say they learn a lot too,” says Dizdaveric. “And the students really enjoy it. They recognize me now. They call me their ‘healthy teacher.’”

NEP’s school-based nutrition education workshops are also through our offices in Boston, Brockton, Fall River, Lawrence, Springfield, and Worcester.