School Cafeterias Celebrate the Holidays

Holiday sights, sounds and smells are buzzing in school kitchens and cafeterias across the country! From school nutrition staff in Texas wearing matching shirts with holiday messages, to students making latkes to share with classmates in Massachusetts and gingerbread cookie making in Georgia, holiday celebrations entail long traditions as well as new ways to get festive. 

At Eastside Elementary School in Coffee County Schools (GA), kindergarten teacher Nichole Dale asked the café manager for help with a STEAM activity. In class, students read several versions of “The Gingerbread Man” to learn about comparisons and contrasts and did some experiments with gingerbread cookies. After, they went to the school’s kitchen to learn about food safety, where eggs come from and how to keep cookies from sticking to the pan.

With the assistance of Henderson Blair, the café manager, students cut out the cookies, baked them and then had the opportunity to eat them! 

“We talked about how chemical reactions happen when the butter, eggs and dough are mixed. We used math skills to know how many eggs and cups of water to mix with because we had two boxes and each box needed one part of the ingredient,” said  Nichole Dale. “It was great for the students to have the learning opportunity with our school community partners on a personal level such as our wonderful lunchroom staff.”

Holiday cooking lessons also happened after school hours with nutrition team members.  Arizona’s Madison School District holds a cooking club after school throughout the year where the nutrition team teaches students how to make a variety of foods. Recently, the lesson was pie making timed for the students to learn and make for their families as they celebrate the holidays.

A group of student members of the Jewish Student Union (JSU) in Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Massachusetts approached the nutrition department about making latkes. They wanted to make the traditional potato pancake for their classmates as Hanukkah got underway.

“We met with the students a few times during their club meetings to come up with a plan of how to make enough latkes for the high school students and staff to try,” said Bryanna Ippolito, School Nutrition Coordinator, Acton-Boxborough Regional School District.

They shared a family recipe and the nutrition department purchased the necessary ingredients. The students stayed after school for about three hours working in the kitchen peeling, chopping, grating, mixing, squeezing and frying the latkes.

They made about 300 latkes which were cut in half for the lunchtime taste testing on the first day of Hankukkah. The students also set up a table with a menorah, dreidels, gelt and information about the Festival of Lights.

“I want to show my gratitude to the students who worked so hard to do this all, they are the ones who made this happen,” said Ippolito.

The kitchen elves from the Lowndes School Nutrition Program in Georgia created “Santa’s Stable” for students to enter as they head through the lunch lines.

At Brenham Independent School District in Texas, the elves showed their holiday spirit serving some of their favorite meals at Brenham Middle School.

School nutrition professionals at Dayton City Schools in Tennessee had the help of “Elfie” to cheer up the lines and give the students something to look forward to each morning. Elfie was see “fishing” for snacks, riding the train and just keeping a watchful eye on students as they go through the breakfast serving lines