Golestan Education has a long tradition of serving family-style meals with fresh, organic foods, and involving the students in cooking. Students learn about where their food is coming from and experience cooking cuisines from around the world. During the pandemic, they worked to retain this element while taking mealtimes outdoors.

Though Golestan is a smaller school, its community’s pandemic response offer much for other schools and school districts to learn from. Like so many other schools, they started small, thought outside the box, and did what was needed to keep their community safe — while enjoying beautiful food outside!

Read more about about Golestan Education and its overall outdoor learning strategy in this case study.

Interview with School Staff

In October 2021, we asked Golestan Education’s Executive Director, Yalda Modabber, to share a bit about the school’s usual meal programming, and how they pivoted during the pandemic to ensure safety while continuing the school’s tradition of healthy, nutritious, family-style meals.

Green Schoolyards America: What is the history of your meal program (before COVID)?

YM: We have for the last 12 years had an in-house chef that prepares our food. All meals are made in house. We also serve two to three snacks depending on the length of the day.

Homemade lunch and meals are organic and the meat comes from a local farm. It's all part of the pedagogy of the school: we teach the whole child, so everything impacts their learning—what they eat, and what they eat is impacted by where it comes from. Everything's homemade. For hot meals, there's a protein, a green, and two vegetables. 

We also have a salad every single day. Because they have gardens that they have access to every single day, both in the playground and in the farm area. They're constantly munching on kale so they've developed the palate for chlorophyll! They love salad. We have tons of salad. I think we go through 20 to 30 pounds of lettuce a week for just the kids’ salad.

It makes it in some ways easier, and in some ways, much more challenging. Other schools often have third-party providers that deliver the meals and those are already pre-packaged and easy to serve. But because we don't want to use anything disposable, it is a little more complicated. We don't use disposable plates or napkins, and have to wash them.

Traditionally, they would eat in the dining room, and they would serve each other, and teachers sit  with the kids to eat their meal with their kids. At the end of the meal, they would sing a song to the person who prepared their meal, thanking them for the hands that prepared their meals.

In terms of preparation and cleaning dishes, we have parent volunteers or other other staff. We have three full-time facilities people who are in charge of both cleaning the school and helping in the kitchen. The kitchen help is just a couple of hours a day. But that's what's different about our school than others. Most people bring in a cleaning crew at night, which is not the case with our schools. We have a cleaning crew who clean the school during the day.

School Meal Data

• Three to four snacks and meals are served daily.

• 100% of school’s food waste is composted.

• Budget for maintaining the outdoor meals program: $170,000 for food and staffing, annually. This is about the same as before COVID-19. Note: school does not use pre-packed items.

Suggested Equipment

• Carts; we also use flour sack towels to line each shelf.

• Cups: 8-Ounce Stainless Steel Cups or Voloop 12-Ounce Stainless Steel Cups.

• Water dispenser.

• Reusable plates (many use disposable plates, but we want to offer an alternative).

Above: A typical lunchtime cart.

Above: School staff preparing individual meals.

GSA: How did you adjust snack and mealtime during the pandemic?

YM: But now, each class eats in an outdoor classroom area separately. Many of our classrooms have sliding doors and a private patio and so they eat in those classrooms and in their own private patio areas. Some eat outside exclusively. 

The food is brought on a cart. It's kind of like a hotel room service! They leave the cart at each classroom door. The teachers serve the food to the kids because they know what each kid eats and doesn't eat. The kids eat and then they put their plates back on the cart again. The students will help wheel the carts back to the kitchen.

GSA: You mention that mealtime is linked to the school’s philosophy of educating the whole child. How do you tie snacks and meals in with your curriculum?

YM: They cook a lot here—about once a week. They're learning about a different country, so they cook foods from that country, or they learn about the spices from that country.

Even at the preschool level they're cooking very regularly and eat the foods that they made. That is generally what becomes their snack, or they'll take it home. For example, if they make pasta,  they bring it home to dry it right and then cook it and make a sauce for it.

GSA: Are there any foods that are culturally relevant to the school community that you focus on?

YM: The school was born out of this need for a Persian language immersion school; there weren't any in the whole country at the time, and we wanted to help other communities start schools that are Persian language immersion.

There is a cultural component, but we want to raise these kids who are aware of the world outside of their world, and for me that's very relevant. So, when we were developing the program, it was really important to me that we give our kids a global perspective. So when it comes to food, we actually want them to learn about foods from all over the world and foods that are indigenous to this area. 

Last year we did a unit for our second graders, where they were learning about the indigenous people from this area, and at the same time learning about their own heritage. They cooked foods that were made of ingredients that were foraged from this area that were available to Indigenous people of this area, while also sharing foods from their home from their culture. They did a potluck with lots of foods from their Syrian, Iranian, German [backgrounds] … it was just sort of this wonderful blend.

Families are involved in the sharing of food from their cultures, because the kids are bringing stuff home that they cooked. Many cooked with their kids at home and brought the food in for people to sample. So for example, when they were learning about spices they'll compare it to the spices that they smelled from last week from, say, Latin America or the Americas, right, and then they were like, the spices that New Mexico as compared to Central America and how are they similar how are they different.

GSA: What does a typical day look like regarding meals?

YM:  They get their snack by 9:30. One example: We use these little disposable bags that fold over and add banana bread, dried fruits, granola bark, or something similar. It’s individualized.

We have our lunch at 11:30. It's wheeled outside to the individual classroom—so we have six carts with the first classes with their meals, with the teachers serving the kids. The kids are required to taste everything at least once so they get a sample of everything, even if they don't want it. When they're done eating, if they want seconds, they go back to the cart and they're served seconds. If not, they put their dirty dishes in the special bowls for the dirty dishes and then they wheel the cart back to the kitchen.

Afternoon snack is at 2:15 and is a little heartier, like a hard-boiled egg or popcorn with some nutritional yeast. Or granola with yogurt and fruit, chia seed pudding, banana bread that is sweetened with fruit, hummus with celery and carrots and special crackers that they make with cream cheese. Those are popular snacks.

For aftercare [the after-school program], they have another whole other meal. We have kids [who] come from outside for the after-school enrichment program.

GSA: Do you have any advice to other schools wanting to take meals outside?

YM: If we can do it, anyone can! If we can serve meals and the kids can eat safely without having to adjust very dramatically, then anybody can. 

Larger schools are more challenging, but they also have the equipment, resources, and the people that can help make this possible. And you don't need to make your own crackers [like we have be doing], you could just buy individually wrapped crackers, which is what a larger school would be doing that's feasible.

If the priority is to keep things as safe as possible, first and foremost, start there. Define what your priority is and what your goals are. Then, based on what you come up with, you may need to break apart the system [you are used to], as opposed to just doing something to be compliant. 

The biggest gift of eating outside is that you are going to be less afraid of a child being positive and passing it on to the grandparents at home. 

It's a lot less effort to shift and eat outside than to have an outbreak at a school. But, the impact of an outbreak is so much greater than adjusting your operations to provide meals outside. It may not feel like it—it may feel daunting. If you think of it, not just from the perspective of the school but from a community perspective. With the impact COVID has on our community and our hospitals and the variants that are starting to emerge … it's a no-brainer.

Think outside the box–I know how daunting it is to try to address all the different requirements and restrictions. But if one can look at those as opportunities as opposed to obstacles, then you're liberated. But if you see them as obstacles, then you're stuck, and you won't move. That won't create change, and it will be to the detriment of our kids and our community.

Above: Students continue to cook together safely—experiencing the joy of cooking and togetherness.