Nourishing Minds — and Bodies. The Culinary Program at TEL.
Do you remember school lunch when you were a child? It was most likely rushed, loud, anxiety-ridden, and chaotic. And the food didn’t make the experience any better, with selections like sloppy joes, canned vegetables, and the ever-popular meat surprise.
Having owned a restaurant business, and with three children experiencing public school lunch, the founders of Trust Early Learners envisioned something better.
At Trust Early Learners, lunchtime is a critical component of the Global program, which focuses on Social and Emotional Competency, and the Ability to Organize Around a Task. These skills are naturally encouraged in a formal mealtime setting, where students eat a three-course lunch every day with their classmates and teachers.
Director Michael Moore, in his 2015 documentary, Where Do we Invade Next?, highlights the French public school system’s lunch. This 6-minute clip from the film was the inspiration for the TEL Culinary Program.
Our lunch menu is created weekly by our own chefs. Sauces are made from scratch, the bread is baked fresh, vegetables are sourced from a local organic farm whenever possible — even the pizza, right down to the dough, is homemade. As in Moore’s film, children learn about pacing, manners, conversation, nutrition, and the foods they eat. Meals are brought to the classrooms by the chefs, are served on plates with real silverware, and students drink water.
When we first introduced the idea for a one-hour lunch, there was a lot of skepticism from both educators and families, and the experiment began on shaky ground. In our first year, it took months to get the children to sit for the full hour, but as time went on, they learned to LOVE lunchtime. They adore Chef Susan and her staff and look forward to discovering the daily menu.
The Chefs – trained at the Culinary Institute and with years of restaurant experience — also visit the classrooms for cooking demonstrations and seasonal tastings of peppers, radishes, apples, beets, and even spice smelling.
The families at TEL are the most impressed — many have commented that their children would refuse to eat (fill in the blank), but they eat it at TEL. We are seeing the impact on our children physically, emotionally, and socially.
As the Michael Moore film depicts, and as we’re proving every day, the French truly have something the American education system can and should adopt.
Bon appetit!