For example, in Zvolen, the teacher discovered that the cooks had already cooked soup around half past eleven. She wondered if they could serve her earlier. The teacher is very proactive and managed to motivate the head of the canteen, the director and her colleagues. At the Green School, we try to make things meaningful and care about how the school works.
Why did you decide that the audits will be done directly by children and teachers?
We want those changes to be real and non-directive. If the headmistress or action teacher only gave orders, people would not listen to them. This is the way to really bring changes to life. In the process, children learn important life skills – they identify the situation, name the problem, discuss its causes and solutions, and try to plan steps to change. If they don’t succeed, they look for new ways. Thus, the program brings a whole range of skills for both children and teachers, because our schools are not always set up for children to participate in their functioning.
In this case, what surprised you the most from the children or the teachers?
At the Hrnčiarska Elementary School in Zvolen, which has repeatedly received an international certificate, they have an excellent school coordinator who listens to the children. One of the things they came up with was that the solution is basically very simple – we just need to care about what we offer children.
We can look at it from an environmental point of view (less waste), but also from a health point of view. When children are not fed and do not have enough fluids, they are less able to concentrate and have headaches. It is a complex topic.
When we look specifically at the bins, what is most often left in them? Can you specify what children dislike the most?
Canteen managers and cooks must cook according to state standards. Fortunately, the cream puffs that we older people remember are no longer the norm. It is important to discuss with children so that they understand that they cannot be spaghetti every day.
We have examples of schools where the cafeteria manager sat down with the children and discussed the menu. Among the foods that children don’t like, for example, fish that they are not used to from home, or various vegetable salads. Sometimes it is interesting – the same children would eat the soup if it was not mixed. One age group does not want broccoli cream, another prefers it just like this. It also depends on the adjustment. Sometimes it is enough to omit the cinnamon that the cooks put in the tomato soup.
Children today are also used to a lot of salt, so food in the canteen with a standardized salt content may seem bland to them. When cafeterias work with schools, it’s about a shared discussion. In Dudinci, for example, girls from the second grade cook soups according to recipes from the school canteen and offer them to younger students to taste. When children then go to lunch, they are more inclined to eat the food. Another trick is that in Dudinci they take pictures of the food from the menu every day so that the children know what they are ordering the next day.
You mentioned fish. Is it the parents’ fault that they don’t offer them to their children at home?
It is a combination of customs from home and the economic situation in Slovakia. Fish is expensive and it is sometimes difficult for a single mother to buy it, even though she knows that her children should eat it. We have children in Slovakia for whom lunch in the school canteen is the only hot meal of the day.
In the Green School program, however, we also deal with where food comes from. We had a course in Zaježová for teachers and canteen managers on the topic of food. For example, we discussed mint, which we have in almost every garden, but in the commercial network it is bought from Kenya. Or onions from New Zealand. We talk about the carbon footprint and if you order raspberries from Morocco in April, how did they travel?
We try to have the canteens cook seasonally and order local fruit. Kindergarten Clementisa in Prievidza, for example, is preparing a market of local producers. Parents will be able to buy from farmers and taste quality homemade food there.
I’ll go back to the kids creating their menus. Are you also teaching them economics? After all, they must know how much money is spent on lunches.
Yes, it is basically financial literacy in practice. Children are sometimes surprised at how much their parents pay and how much the state pays extra. It is a combination of civics, mathematics and financial literacy. When they find that they have thrown away a third of the plate, we convert it into money. Ask a child if he would throw 10 euros in the bin – he will say no. But when they see how much money ends up in waste with 600 kilos of food per month, they start to think about it. However, I would like to point out that it is not just about schools, a third of food is also thrown away by households.
It’s great that children can also educate their parents in this way. What do they enjoy most about your cooking classes?
We currently have an Earth Day challenge “Create a party recipe with us”. Children make spreads, cakes or salads, which must be local, seasonal and without palm oil. If they use cocoa or chocolate, it should be of Fair Trade quality. They are often surprised at how much palm oil is found in common products.
Do the students have any favorite healthy foods?
For example, carrot salad – it is tasty, juicy and crunchy. Preschoolers love spreads with funny names, like “Shrek’s spread,” which is actually peas or broccoli. The name does a lot.
Are snack soups coming back to schools? For older students and teenagers who are still hungry, this sounds like an ideal solution instead of vending machines…
It depends on the age. Boys in seventh or eighth grade are developing and basically hungry all the time. That soup at ten o’clock will help them a lot. I see vending machines in schools as a problem. They offer sweets, baguettes full of “Es” and drinks that are overpriced. We have a school in Ivanka near the Danube, which removed two vending machines and replaced them with ten soups. School should be a place where children experience a healthy environment, not a place for marketing unsuitable products.
Can you give examples of good practice?
In the topic of transport and air, for example, the Doktor Fischer United School in Kežmark succeeded in equipping the municipality with speed bumps and signs so that children could walk to school more safely. On the topic of shopping, schools find that if they start printing on both sides, they save half the paper. Some schools have found that they use 50 liters of aggressive cleaning products per month and have replaced them with gentler alternatives.
Waste is a big topic. Many Green Schools can sort out up to 80% of waste, but we mainly teach them about minimization – for example, not to buy boxed juices or cancel “juice bags” for fruit pulp, which are non-recyclable. In Martin, at Kroner’s school, they started to retain rainwater and saved thousands of liters of drinking water, which they used to water the garden.
How do you perceive the Ministry of Education’s approach to these projects?
Many changes happen in schools rather in spite of the system. We perceive the enormous fatigue of teachers from constant reforms. We perceive great arrogance on the part of the founders. At the end of the day, it’s always about the particular teacher in the classroom. Unfortunately, at the moment we are also experiencing negative impacts at the Ministry of the Environment, where experts from the national parks administration who have worked with schools for many years have been dismissed. This directly affects environmental education…
What else can you learn in Ekocast?
- What are the rules for schools that would like to obtain the Green School certificate?
- Is it our fault that we want to treat our children to the exotic and are not aware of the carbon footprint?
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