Brent Mansfield has been passionate about food his whole career. He wove it into his teaching practice as a classroom teacher, worked in the non-profit sector on food systems advocacy, and now teaches a unique course at Lord Roberts Elementary School called Edible Education.
Edible Education, now in its seventh year, combines school gardening, food exploration, food advocacy, mindful eating, and celebrating the joy food can add to our lives. As a specialist teacher, Brent teaches this course as a prep offering to all students in the school from Kindergarten to Grade 7.
Exploring the school garden is the first school food experience for students in Edible Education. They plan for two harvests each school year: one in the fall and winter and one in the spring. Over the winter, they look at seed catalogues, vote on what they’d like to grow next, and plan for the next harvest.
In the course students learn about food and culture, interoceptive awareness (knowing when you’re full or hungry), and soil science. Students also spend a unit of the course learning about school food programs from around the world. Many parts of the world have universal school food programs where students have access to free or subsidized lunches. In Brazil access to food is even a constitutional right.
The students’ inquiry into food programs around the world led them to question Canada’s approach. While students at Lord Roberts have access to a pay-what-you-can lunch program, many schools across Canada are still without reliable food programs.
In October 2023, Brent ran 200 laps around the elementary school to raise awareness and call for the federal government to honour its commitment to invest $200 million per year for five years for food programs in schools. The 200 laps totaled 92 km of running. Students ran alongside Brent in waves, switching off as needed. Brent, however, ran the full 200 laps, starting at 6:00 a.m.
The run got students excited about food advocacy. They went on to write letters to the Prime Minister and their local Member of Parliament about why school food programs matter.
“School food programs have the ability to ensure all students are nourished and ready to learn, while supporting them to develop the food literacy and skills to have a healthy relationship with food.” – Brent Mansfield
One month later, Brent hand-delivered those letters, along with hundreds more letters from students across Canada, written in collaboration with the Coalition for Healthy School Food. He had travelled to Ottawa to run 200 laps around Parliament.
After the April 2024 announcement to commit $1 billion over five years ($200 million per year) to school food programs, Brent was asked if his school would be willing to host the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, as part of the announcement of the National School Food Policy.
When Freeland visited, she brought some of the original letters from students that Brent had hand-delivered in Ottawa.
“It was amazing for kids to see those letters come all the way back,” said Brent. “They got to see that you can use your voice and creativity to get the government’s attention.”
During her visit, Freeland participated in Lord Roberts’ unique approach to a school food program. The school runs a program called LunchLAB, co-founded by Brent and administered through the non-profit organization Growing Chefs.
In LunchLAB, students are involved in planning, preparing, and serving lunch to their peers. When Brent first co-founded the program, his school was one of very few schools where elementary students prepare and serve lunch for their peers.
The program operates with a pay-what-you-can model. The standard price is $6 per lunch, but parents/guardians can opt to pay what works for their family.
LunchLAB is set up with a leadership pipeline for Grades 6 and 7 students interested in volunteering. They start as volunteers with the clean team who are responsible for all the clean up when lunch is finished. After some time with the clean team, they can volunteer for the chef team.
Student chefs work with a professional chef-in-residence and sous chef to prepare a delicious lunch for their peers. Every lunch includes a salad bar where students get to choose what and how much they take. The rest of the menu is decided by the chef-in-residence, with input from students. The program works hard to ensure the lunches are a celebration of the diverse food experiences that exist in the school community.
“We want to encourage eating together, taking pride in food experiences, and staying away from lunchbox shaming,” said Brent.
Students take a lot of pride in their work with the clean team and chef team. Over 100 students are signed up to volunteer, and several parents from the school community regularly volunteer to support the program. The program is expanding to a fourth school in the coming months, a task Brent is excited to support.
Brent noted that school food programs don’t—and shouldn’t—look the exact same in every school. Each school has to imagine what works well for their school community and carve out a program that fits best with their community’s unique needs.
The federal funding to implement food programs requires each province to sign an agreement to join the National School Food Program. BC was not able to sign an agreement this fall due to the provincial election. After the funding is secured, there will be much to do to implement programs in all schools across the province.
Brent’s advocacy has continued through the fall: he ran laps from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the length of a typical school day, around the BC Legislature in Victoria in October. He displayed the school lunch trays along with student art and food puns on the steps of the Legislature and was joined by students from Victoria public schools and teachers from the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association.
Through advocacy work, the school lunch program, and the Edible Education course, Brent’s students are learning how impactful activism can be, and how joyful and necessary school food programs are.
“School food programs have the ability to ensure all students are nourished and ready to learn, while supporting them to develop the food literacy and skills to have a healthy relationship with food,” said Brent. “It is an exciting time to see BC and Canada developing and expanding these programs, and teachers have a critical role to play.”