School Food and Food Education Training Hub

Farm to Cafeteria Canada is collaborating with partners across Canada to build a School Food and Food Education Training Hub¹ (“the Hub”) to support K-12 educators and organizations to expand hands-on food literacy education (a central component of the farm to school approach).²

Working with knowledge holders, experts, and F2CC’s partners, we will offer professional development training, resources, networking, and knowledge-sharing opportunities so that educators can grow their capacity to offer engaging, equitable, and evidence-based food literacy programs. With online and in-person regional opportunities, we envision the Hub becoming a nationally recognized, go-to place for educators who are interested in embedding food into their teaching, and using it as a way to connect with their communities and other passionate school food practitioners from coast to coast to coast.

For years, educators have shared a need for more resources and professional development to help them teach about food:

“I rarely find that any professional development directly helps me with food literacy learning. It just doesn’t really exist out there.”
“I think if [educators] could get some professional development, that would be fabulous. And then ways to integrate and see – it doesn’t have to be more work. It might actually lubricate what you’re trying to achieve in your classroom already with literacy and math and science…”
“…I see this Training Hub as a possible way for educators to build confidence and access credible resources that will remove barriers to exploring these food literacy topics within the practical parameters of their teaching assignment.”

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Defining food literacy:

We define food literacy as understanding where food comes from, how to grow and prepare it, and how to make healthy and nourishing choices about food. It also means understanding how food impacts health, economics, and the environment, and how food is a vital part of culture and community. Learn more about how we define this and other terms used in our work in our Glossary of Terms.

1 Working name. The Hub’s official name will be decided on in the next phase of the project in consultation with partners and educators.

2 The first phase of the Hub will focus on developing supports to expand food literacy education; in the second phase of Hub development we will create and add content to support school food practitioners in Canada. Supporting school food and food education are part of F2CC’s “farm to school” approach. To better reflect the diversity of local and traditional foods that can be enjoyed in schools from coast to coast to coast, we also call this a “local food to school” approach.

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We are currently working to:

Do a needs assessment to guide how the Hub will serve the diverse needs of educators and students across Canada.
Develop and apply a vibrant Food Systems Literacy Competencies Framework (Martin et al., 2024) to guide the development of the Hub’s professional development training courses, in collaboration with an academic partner.
Set up a Circle of Advisors with diverse representation to guide the project and co-create the Hub’s vision, mandate, Theory of Change, resource offerings, and evaluation plan.
Identify potential Hub collaborators to build on and amplify previous work, and partner on future training and resource development.
Secure funding to roll out the Hub, including developing the first suite of cohort-based training courses designed to help educators understand topics such as how food can be a vehicle for learning through various subjects on a range of topics such as anti-racism, diverse cultures, climate and sustainability, and health and wellbeing. Certificates of course completion will be offered.
Develop a hybrid model that will offer non-credit courses to begin with, and both non-credit and accredited courses over time.

Through this work we hope that:

Educators will have meaningful opportunities to connect with each other through courses, networking, and knowledge-sharing events, both regionally and nationally, developing a strong peer network.

Educators will have deeper knowledge, skills, and confidence to make curriculum links and leverage the power of food to teach about diverse cultures, community, health, agriculture, justice, the environment and climate change, careers, and broad social systems using experiential, place-based, and land-based pedagogy.

Educators will feel confident in taking an equity-informed, culturally responsive, and inclusive teaching and learning approach so that Indigenous, Black and other students of colour, and students who experience a range of vulnerabilities or lived experiences, can benefit from food literacy education without stigma.

Educators will have tangible, age-appropriate, evidence-based ideas and activities to build food literacy in children and youth, including helping them develop critical thinking and life skills in order to take action in support of their personal, community, and planetary wellbeing.

Educators will understand best practices for supporting mental health and positive relationships with food, and how food can help learning come to life and inspire joy and meaning among students.

Educators will feel supported in the logistics of running hands-on cooking, gardening or other land-based learning programs (e.g., food safety, effectively organizing and managing students, growing and harvesting food, food waste), and understand how they can build supportive school food systems, programs that will be sustainable over time, and community connections.

Over time, we plan to broaden the Hub’s scope to offer training and resources that will help schools procure more local foods in support of resilient regional food systems, and allow opportunities to develop pathways for assessment, research, innovation and continuous improvement of school food environments in Canada.

Special thanks to our project team, leading the development of the Hub:

Sarah Keyes

Food Literacy Lead, Farm to Cafeteria Canada and Ontario Lead, Coalition for Healthy School Food

Alicia Martin

PhD candidate, Geography, Environment & Geomatics, University of Guelph

Brent Mansfield

Edible Education Specialist Teacher, Vancouver School Board; Co-founder of LunchLAB; advocate with Coalition for Healthy School Food

Rob Vanwynsberghe

Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia

Kathleen Kevany

Professor, Food Impacts with Dalhousie University, Faculty of Agriculture

Jesse Veenstra

Executive Director, Farm to Cafeteria Canada

If you are interested in learning more or collaborating on the development and implementation of the Hub, please contact Sarah Keyes, F2CC’s Food Literacy Lead, at sarah@sustainontario.ca.