On May 24th school nutrition professionals from Massachusetts came together for the annual Healthy Kids, Healthy Programs Summit at Four Points by Sheraton, Norwood. This annual conference sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and The John C. Stalker Institute of Food and Nutrition promotes healthy students and healthy school nutrition programs.
The conference kicked off with a welcome from Robert Leshin, MPA, Acting Director of the Office for Food and Nutrition Programs, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Karen McGrail, Med, RD, LDN, Director of the John C. Stalker Institute of Food and Nutrition.
Lori Coakley, PhD, Professor of Management, Bryant University, gave the morning keynote Leading Engagement: Transforming Your Human Capital One Employee at a Time where she discussed the ins and outs of employee engagement and gave tips on how to capitalize on employees’ potential. Later Dr. Coakley dove deeper into this topic in her morning and afternoon breakout sessions.
The lunch keynote, Leadership in the Kitchen: Moving Towards a Culture of Ongoing Learning, was given by two presenters from MassTERI who discussed work culture by first comparing it to a garden. They used the following analogy in their explanation…as a gardener (supervisor) you cannot give all your attention to just the plants (employees), you must also consider the ecosystem (culture) since the two affect each other. They continued, “In the kitchen, some things are out of your reach when it comes to affecting the culture.” They also provided several examples of things you CAN control that will positively impact the culture including: how you choose to present policy change, using effective communication, managing conflict by determining what the problem is, using adult learning techniques, and striving to accommodate a variety of learning styles when teaching employees.
Visit the 2016 Healthy Kids, Healthy Programs webpage for presentation files from the summit. To view more photos from the conference, visit our Pinterest page The JOHN STALKER INSTITUTE (JSI) Rocks.
