Farm to School Symposium

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Schedule

Time Agenda

8:30 am Registration begins

9:00 am Welcome

9:45 am Introduction to Farm to School

10:45 am Lettuce Persuade You - Teacher/Student Panel

11:45 am Lunch featuring delicious grub from Duck’s Cosmic Kitchen (http://www.duckscosmickitchen.com/and Networking)

1:00 pm Breakout Sessions:

- Farm to School 101 (Asset-Based Community Mapping/Managing Volunteers)
- School Gardening
- Working With Students in the Garden/Curriculum Ideas Catered to PreK-12
- Learning Experiences in the Cafeteria/Taste Tests as a Learning Experience

2:45 pm Closing presentation

3:15 pm Closing Ceremonies

4:00 pm Mixer at the Wylde Center!

Featuring music by Adron (http://www.adronworld.com/)
Food, drinks, and raffle prizes will be offered.
A perfect way to end the day: network with others while enjoying some delicious food and amazing music, all in the picturesque oasis of the Wylde Center gardens!

To register or learn more about vendor and sponsorship opportunities, visit

Businesses and organizations also have the opportunity to advertise throughout the event. Vendors will have a table to display their wares throughout the day, while sponsors can choose from three different levels of sponsorships to advertise in the symposium brochure and be acknowledged at the symposium.

Speaker Bios

Diane Harris

Diane Harris is a Visiting Scientist in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There she serves on the Guidelines Development and Recommendations team working on promoting policy, systems, and environmental change strategies to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. She advises CDC-funded programs on farm to school/preschool and is the CDC lead for Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, a comprehensive public health effort to mobilize and engage stakeholders at the local, state, and national level to support salad bars in schools. She also is an Associate Researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she oversees a research program studying the activity of plant-derived anticancer compounds in pancreatic cancer. Dr. Harris serves on the Board of Directors of Georgia Organics and is a member of the GA Farm to School Alliance, which acts at the state level through government and other agencies to facilitate farm to school programs in Georgia. Additionally, she is the mother of two girls in Cobb County public schools.

Susanna Shewan

Susanna Shewan is currently a Kindergarten teacher at Glennwood Elementary in the City Schools of Decatur, going on her 18^th year of teaching! Previously, she was a Pre-K teacher at the College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center, the Decatur school that serves 0 years – PreK. She loves teaching math and science, which is one of the reasons that Farm to School intrigued her. She is a recent graduate of the Decatur Farm to School Teacher Workshop Series and created a curriculum based on chickens. She has two kids in the City Schools of Decatur. She enjoys reading and spending time with her family.

Tabitha Wiedower

Tabitha Wiedower is a gifted and math endorsed 3rd grade teacher at Glennwood Elementary in the City Schools of Decatur. Tabitha is also a contract developer for Atomic Learning where she creates online video tutorials for a variety of technologies as part of online professional learning for adult and student learners. She is currently pursuing a Masters degree at Georgia State University in Instructional Design & Technology. Beyond academia, Tabitha has served faithfully on the Decatur Farm to School Executive Committee as Secretary since its inception as a branch of the Wylde Center in 2011.

Scott Seitz

Scott Seitz is the Co-founder and Director of Camp Scene Environmental Adventures in Atlanta, Georgia, a summer day camp with the mission of fostering nature appreciation and environmental stewardship. Camp Scene takes the classroom outdoors, offering fascinating studies of Georgia wildlife and eco-regions, energy conservation and alternatives, composting, organic farming, water conservation, and air pollution. Their newest adventure is an after-school program that will maintain the same high level of quality environmental education in a fun and enriching atmosphere. As a former middle school science and math teacher of Clayton County schools, Scott understands the importance of providing “a hands-on, standards-based education that builds more than academic and character skills. It builds a strong foundation of environmental stewardship and provides memories of fun for a lifetime!” Scott is nationally certified as an Interpretive Guide through the National Association of Interpretive Guides (NAIA).

Michelle Stasko

Michelle Stasko is originally from Chicago, Illinois and went to school in Winona, Minnesota graduating in Family and Consumer Sciences Education. She went to work in the business field working for Amana Refrigeration as a test kitchen home economist, and the Sanyo Corporation as an equipment specialist. She later became a food and equipment consultant working for various food companies for over 20 years. She also became a leading special events consultant in the Southeast. She once had three tea parties for the Lipton Tea Company in three different cities in the same week. Michelle now teaches Culinary Arts at Tucker High School in Dekalb County. She participated in the Farm to School program during the last school year and is an advocate for organic foods starting in the classroom.

Korri Ellis

Korri Ellis teaches Environmental Science, AP Environmental Science, and Oceanography at Grady High School in Atlanta, Georgia. She also facilitates the Grady Earth Club, an environmentally themed service learning club that manages the school garden, school recycling, and participates in a variety of community service projects.

Amir Outerbridge

Amir Outerbridge is a 10^th grader at Decatur High School and has the recognition of being awarded one of the first two coveted Decatur Farm to School Summer Internships for Decatur High School students. This experience gave him the opportunity to work with several local community gardens as well as restaurants, such as the Sugar Creek Garden, the Wylde Center, and Farm Burger, to learn just what it takes, from seed to plate, to bring food to the table and how to successfully run a garden/farm or restaurant. His favorite hobby is sports and one of the more memorable moments of his internship includes having to grind up chicken heads for fertilizer.

Stephanie Van Parys

Stephanie Van Parys has served as the Executive Director of the Wylde Cener, formerly the Oakhurst Community Garden Project since March 2005. She has lived in Decatur since 1998 with her husband, three kids, chickens, dog, and a large garden. Before coming to the Wylde Center, Stephanie served on the Board of Directors for both Sevananda and Georgia Organics. She writes regularly for local publications on gardening in Georgia and has taught classes at the Atlanta Botanical Garden for over 14 years. Creating places where children can explore nature as well as learn how to keep both their bodies and the earth healthy is very important. It is what drives her work at the Wylde Center.

Myriam Dormer

Myriam Dormer is the Youth Programs Manager at the Wylde Center, formerly the Oakhurst Community Garden Project. Myriam was born in Cameroon, West Africa and spent most of her younger years between Indiana and Massachusetts. She received her BA in Religious Studies at Indiana University where she completed her thesis on the religious culture of Brazil. While in Brazil, she became acutely aware of the importance of advocacy and empowerment. Through her work in the garden, she is able to interact with a diverse community of people teaching self-reliance, sustainability, and asset-based development. Among her many activities, she leads the Decatur Farm to School district-wide taste tests and the Teacher Workshop series. She enjoys spending time with her family, playing Capoeira Angola, crocheting, feeding people, and traveling.

Carla Linkous

Carla Linkous is a public health consultant with over fifteen years of program and project management experience in private, public and nonprofit sectors. Carla has been a volunteer with the Decatur Farm to School Program since its inception, spearheading the communications and media venues for the initiative. Carla currently serves on its Executive Committee and recently returned from the 2012 National Farm to Cafeteria Conference with Stephanie Van Parys, receiving much attention for their presentations of building a farm to school brand and implementing a district-wide taste test. Carla has three children in the City Schools of Decatur.

Lucia Pawloski

Lucia Pawloski serves as the Chair for the Decatur Farm to School (DF2S) Executive Committee. She has served DF2S since its inception in 2009. She participates in the district-wide taste tests, Teacher Workshop Series, quarterly newsletters, and fundraising events. Her formal training is in molecular biology/genetics and is a Biologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She has three kids in the City Schools of Decatur, but lovingly considers DF2S as her “fourth child”.

Ashley Rouse

Ashley Rouse oversees the APS Parents’ Farm to School Coalition, which aims to bring fresh, local produce to school cafeterias in Atlanta. Ashley connects farmers to cafeteria vendors, oversees training for cafeteria managers on how to prepare meals with fresh produce, and finds ways to introduce salad bars on campuses. Ashley also works with nonprofits and organizations, such as Georgia Organics and the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, and is a Board member of several Atlanta farmers markets. Ashley and her husband maintain a four and a half acre farm in East Atlanta Village, where they raise animals and grow seasonal vegetables.

Leslie Grant

Leslie Grant is the President and Mother Hen of Chickin Feed, a company with a mission to raise a nutritionally literate generation. Chickin Feed makes healthy eating fun and educational with creative tools, tips, and recipes that the whole family can enjoy. As Lesley puts it, “From the minute they pop out, we struggle with what and how to feed our kids. It all seems VERY complicated – scientific almost – but we don’t think it needs to be. We’ve got some simple, fun and effective ways to help folks learn the very basics of building a healthy coop.”

Kirk A. Farquharson

Kirk Farquharson is the Southeast Regional OfficeFarm to School Coordinator for the USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s Southeast Regional Office located in Atlanta. The Southeast Region includes GA, FL, SC, NC, TN, KY, AL, and MS. Kirk has been involved with the development and advancement of Farm to School activities in all eight states and is an active member of the GA Farm to School Alliance. Recently, Kirk spoke at the Tennessee Farm to School Symposium in Nashville, TN, the Kentucky School Nutrition Associations Annual Conference in Covington, KY, Georgia’s first Multicultural Sustainable Agriculture and Leadership Conference in Norcross, GA, the Florida Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises Conference in Kissimmee, FL and most recently the 6th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Burlington, VT. USDA is supporting Farm to School efforts through a number of initiatives because it recognizes the growing interest among school districts and communities wanting to incorporate regionally and locally produced farm foods into the school nutrition programs.

Chef Javon McKinney

Chef Javon is Owner of Intimate Food Affair Personal Service, a new, innovative food service business aimed at offering high quality, moderately priced, customized food menus using only the freshest, preservative-free ingredients. Chef Javon was born into a family of culinarians and exposed to a variety of cuisines. This environment inspired her to attend Le Cordon Bleu Culinary College Atlanta, from which she received an Associates Degree in Occupational Science. Chef Javon went on to graduate from the personal chef undergraduate course at the Culinary Business Academy and Serf Safe Certified. Her goal is to provide personal chef services, featuring local, seasonal, and organic ingredients, to both individuals and families. Her mission statement: “putting an intimate touch on everything we do,” speaks for itself. Chef Javon currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her wonderful husband and beautiful daughter.