August 18, 2025

By Louis Huler 

For the third year in a row, a group of 22 educators from around Philadelphia dedicated four weeks over the summer towards building their knowledge about agriculture and nutrition to bring back into their classrooms. The program, headed by Vera Lee, EdD, clinical professor for the School of Education,, is dedicated to addressing the need in the community for youth education around food- whether that means cultivating healthy practices, or exposing students to potential jobs within the industry.

According to Lee, this USDA-funded initiative is changing the perspective of students through the teachers that participate. “Adults are truly the most influential people in a child's life. If the teachers can get really excited about this and find a way to integrate it, think about that in the context of lifelong health and decisions you make now in your childhood, how that impacts you a couple of decades down the line,” said Lee..

Her vision is certainly reaching her teachers, who upon completion of the program look forward to the effects it can have in their classrooms. “I'm excited about the information that I've learned, how to cook foods, the nutritional value behind things, gardening, and just how I can incorporate that and teach my students who may not have access or know that stuff,” says Sherri Van Guine, a 10th grade counselor at West Philadelphia High School.

Teaching students the science behind what they eat, and valuable details about what is and isn’t healthy, does more than encourage overall health- it gives students who may never have otherwise been familiar with nutritional information exposure, as well as opens up doors to new jobs. “One of the things I ask the counselors to do is to think about your student body,” Lee says. “[Counselors] were coming up with a presentation they would give to families about why they should consider potentially studying food science or agricultural science as a major, and thinking what are different career options, and what are what kind of courses should they be taking in high school in order to be able to be that person.”

This kind of thinking rang true for the program’s participants. As a culmination of the program, the teachers all made presentations on what they were bringing back to their classrooms. One featured a plan for working reading the nutritional labels on food into science curriculum, another offered an interactive website that takes the viewer through potential careers in food and nutrition and the pathways to get there. The program imbued its members with a new understanding of the industry that shines through in these presentations.

The program itself consisted of much more than just a basic education, instead acting as an immersive, comprehensive learning experience for the teachers who took part. Stacy Yates, another counselor at Martin Luther King High School in Germantown, specifically recalls the tour the group took of Puratos, an international baking company with offices in New Jersey, as having a big effect on her.

“Taking a tour of Puratos, learning the way they process food…It's like when you come from the outside, you don't think about all the different ways food is processed from a company perspective,” Yates recalled. “Puratos is in a lot of foods, but we may not necessarily know.” The tour opened up her eyes to the vast amount of work in the food industry that goes on behind the scenes- jobs like flavorists or food scientists, and she hopes to share this knowledge with her students.

The teachers are returning to their schools this fall with a plethora of new information for their students. Keeping kids well informed and well fed, is a huge community need, one that this program is helping to address. As the newest class of educators brings their knowledge back to the classroom, a new batch of students will be exposed to opportunities around food they may have never otherwise known.