Manatee School Food Service

After working in Sarasota County, the next rotation was at Manatee County Food and Nutrition Services main office. The first day we went to the department's Monday Briefing meeting and learned what we would be doing the rest of that week.

We then sat through a KPI (financial) meeting which looked at the financials of the school food service and action plans were created. In the afternoon we spoke with Sandy Ford, the director of the program and also school nutrition association president.

The next day we went with Melissa to a couple Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program schools (http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/ffvp/). We learned about the program and saw the actual implementation of the program and the difficulties associated with it.

During this rotation we shadowed an area supervisor. We were able to see the kitchens and staff interact at various schools in the district. We learned that the supervisors here in Manatee have 17-18 schools each whereas Sarasota only had 12-13 schools but also had other job requirements. That afternoon we attended a staff meeting and learned about the different projects the staff are working on.

Valentines day was during this rotation and I was able to go to a school and help serve  strawberry shortcake dish to all the students and parents at the school.

I then went with another area supervisor to schools again. I attended a staff meeting discussing ways to lower cost in the schools.

The second week of this rotation, FDACS came to do a summer food service program training- it was nice to see familiar faces!

For our internship we have to do a research project, while in Sarasota I gave surveys to students one day. Then at Manatee I gave surveys to students again.

We shadowed our preceptor who gave a breakfast component training at a high school.

The second to last day I went to an elementary school and gave a nutrition lesson. Our lesson was on fractions and nutrition. We created oatmeal bars and used the process of cutting them to teach fractions. We also used oranges to help teach fractions to 3rd grade students. We created the lesson plan as well as a parent handout which gave the recipe taught about breakfast, and incorporated Florida history into the handout.