Fenway High ‘test kitchen' cooking up districtwide menu changes

The United States has rising childhood obesity and schools deal with kids who are picky. Through innovative school gardens and kid taste testing food, entrepreneurs across the nation are getting children to eat vegetables at school and love it.

Unlike the honors colleges at most universities, the Honors Living-Learning Community at Rutgers University-Newark recruits students based on "grit" and commitment to social justice. The Community creates a supportive experience within the larger campus and focuses students' studies on issues ranging from civil rights to environmental justice. “For the first time these students are learning about themselves and about that corner where they come from,” an assistant dean commented. Honors students' freshman GPAs are on average half a grade higher than the grades of non-honors students.

Journalist Marcella Bombardieri calls community college "one of America's largest and most important anti-poverty programs." The president of Amarillo College in Texas is testing just how far community colleges can go to fight systemic issues - day care, social workers, and emergency funds for students' daily expenses are part of his plan. Other administrators are looking on at the dramatic experiment with mixed views and takeaways.

In a Ohio high school social studies class, U.S. Political Thought and Radicalism, the teacher invites representatives from the country's most extreme political groups, including the National Socialist Movement and the Weather Underground, to teach students how to hold a respectful discussion with others who hold differing perspectives. "Our teachers generally are like, 'You know what? Let's redirect to a different topic, because that one sounds like it's loaded with land mines. The idea of [the class] is let's explore all those land mines and talk about them."

In several small rural towns in Texas, mental health professionals from Texas Tech are offering telemedicine counseling to make up for a lack of counselors available in local middle and high schools. The Governor's office has now asked the successful school districts to develop a training program for teachers in other Texas districts in order to scale the model.

Across New Hampshire, youth are leading the fight against substance abuse. Programs like Dover’s Youth-to-Youth, Stand Up Sachems, Youth Leadership Through Adventure, and the Making it Happen Coalition, are all youth-led, adult-supported initiatives that are empowering young adults to create and disseminate substance abuse awareness and prevention campaigns. Fundamental to each of these efforts effective communication and creating a sense of community as key to prevention.

At one Boston public school, teachers are updating curricula to provide students with history lessons that contextualize current national debates about immigration policy.

At Capital City Public Charter School, students are graded based not only on academic skills but also social and emotional skills. The Washington D.C. school has a high graduation rate and college enrollment rate.

At one Texas high school, members of Students Organizing for Anti-Racism (SOAR) facilitate and participate in talking circles to address conflict, provide mental health support, rebuild relationships, and redevelop social skills they lost during the pandemic. The circles draw on Indigenous traditions to offer a safe, structured space for expression that focuses on addressing harm rather than administering punishment.

Within the Latino community, there are often miscommunications between schools and parents that have a big impact on students' education. To help build a bridge, some schools are hosting forums for Spanish-speaking families and including more inclusive language in messaging to allow parents to be more involved in their children’s education.