Kindergarteners through 5th grade students jostled into the Chilmark Community Center midday on Friday and excitedly bounced around in their seats. Before them: fritattas made with eggs from Slough Farm, bright green salads fresh from Vineyard gardens — served by teachers and parents — and local bread.
And, very visibly, students were having a ball.
“This is the best school ever,” second grader Lilou Decker said while reaching for a second piece of Beetlebung farm bread.
“It’s tasty, delicious, and it’s yummy!” third grader Linen Sykes exclaimed, jumping out of her seat. “These are probably the best lunches we have.”
The setting was the school’s bi-annual community lunch, held at the tail end of the school year as students await summer. Chilmark school students of all ages helped organize the event, whether putting together menus and table settings, even helping to grow and then cook some of the food.
“This meal is like the icing on the cake,” Chilmark school principal Kate Squire said to begin the event on Friday, addressing almost 100 students, teachers, parents and community members that had gathered in the center, which was decorated for the occasion. “I want to say how grateful I am to be part of this community, and how thankful I am for this lunch.”
The traditional gathering began in 2012 when the public school had a lunch program contracted by a large corporate company years ago that provided students with “brown bag lunches.” The lunches often arrived cold and were less nutritionally dense than much of the farm-grown food the Island community boasts.
To spice things up and provide a healthy alternative, Island Grown Initiative (IGI), parents, and volunteers decided to act.
They helped to build a small kitchen in the West Tisbury public school, created school garden initiatives, and tried to imagine a “best case scenario” for food security for students, according to IGI co-executive director Noli Taylor.
That thought-experiment brought them to the idea for “community lunch” — where students and staff got to eat organic and Island-grown foods while learning community practices that were geared toward food stability. The IGI staff and school teachers also had the idea to invite various community members to the lunches, and seat them at different tables so that students could become comfortable with new conversations and food sharing.
“It was in those earlier years at Chilmark that we were trying to imagine: What would an ideal school lunch program look like at the Chilmark school?” Taylor said. “We thought: We could bring children around the table and have this experience of a thoughtful shared meal together that uses local ingredients that students helped prepare.”
Soon after the community lunches took off, IGI took over the “brown bag” lunch program, and now, the Chilmark school has a resident cook, fresh food, and the students help to grow vegetables, fruits, and plants in their own garden on school grounds.
“[Community lunches] give kids a chance to cook and be involved in their food — growing and cultivating it,” special education teacher Melissa Schellhammer said. “Once you’ve touched, grown and connected with food, you’ll try something you wouldn’t normally try. It changes the way kids see and interact with food.”
After the community lunches were suddenly paused during the COVID pandemic of 2020, educators and IGI representatives worked hard to bring it back, as they felt the impact of a gathering like this one was important. They initiated it again in the fall of 2023, and next school season, they’re planning to have them even more frequently.
“I’m glad that we’re doing this again,” fifth grader Ida Wiesner said, remembering the pre-pandemic versions of community lunches. She was excited to see them start again. “It’s really fun.”
For this year’s event, each grade in the kindergarten through 5th grade school had a role — the first graders decorated name tags, 2nd and 3rd graders made party favors for everyone to take home with them, and the 4th and 5th graders designed menus.
And to begin the meal on a high note, the kindergarten students got up on the stage to read poems they had written for the occasion — the subject: springtime.
“Strawberries, strawberries / They grow in the spring / And flowers are blossoming,” one kindergarten student read from a poem they had written to a booming round of applause.
