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The Dining Room

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The Dining Room is a learning environment where students and faculty eat family styles meals. With the intent of building a strong culture of community, each child has a responsibility to the table from setting to serving to composting. All meals are cooked from scratch, on site in accordance with our ingredients standards and food values while a central salad bar helps increase exposure to and consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Family Style Dining

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Students are involved in all aspects of the meal including table preparation.

With a Family Style Dining model, students take a great deal of pride in their meals. Their pride is based on the privilege of eating nutritious food and being involved in serving and eating together as a community. We believe life is given more meaning and beauty with the daily ritual of the table; therefore, we encourage family style dining around a round table. Students and staff dine together and are involved in all aspects of the meal including, table preparations, serving, communal eating, clean-up and composting.

Food Values &
Ingredient Standards

Family style dining creates community around food and allows for students to continue their healthy relationships with food and eating.

Family style dining creates community around food and allows for students to continue strengthening these healthy relationships.

Committing to a “made-from-scratch” lunch program is our hopes for all schools. Use the following food values and ingredient standards as a model…

Ingredient Standards

  • To make delicious, nutritious, seasonal and sustainable meals from scratch (no processed foods)
  • To not use trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup
  • To reduce or eliminate the use of refined sugars
  • To use whole grain flours in baking, pastas and bread products
  • To offer a Salad Bar with a majority of fresh items including at least one protein utilizing local produce when possible
  • To serve fresh fruits and vegetables every day
  • To serve water and non-fat milk (not flavored milk) and 100% fruit juices only
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Lunches allow students enough time to serve, eat, clean-up and socialize.

Food Values

  • To serve family style lunches
  • To track all recipes in a nutrition data-base
  • To purchase and prioritize local, regional and seasonal foods
  • To ensure safe food handling of all food
  • To make all condiments from scratch
  • To roast all sandwich meats to avoid processed deli-style meats
  • To eliminate salt in the Dining Room
  • To make tasty food that people want to eat

Dining Room Initiatives

The Dining Room is a learning environment where food literacy lessons continue to be addressed. Some initiatives to enhance this learning environment:

  • The Market Basket — Helps students identify the raw ingredients in the day’s meal.
  • Tastings — Bi-weekly tastings expose students to ingredients that show up on the menu throughout the month.
  • Signage — Utilize the Dining Room to send messages about food, health and community.
  • Teach — Use lunch time to teach about local, seasonal and cultural values around food.
  • Enjoy Community — Eating family style at round tables provides time to serve, eat, clean-up and socialize together.

Our Learning Environments

The Dining Room

The Dining Room is where students and staff eat as a community and where life lessons come alive.

The Garden

We integrate gardening activities with core curriculum, as well as physical and social education.

The Teaching Kitchen

The Teaching Kitchen is where hands-on activities bring classroom subjects together.

The Home

A holistic approach to learning requires bringing healthy lessons to our homes and communities.