Newton brings healthy practices to Hartselle City Schools

Story by Lauren Jackson
Photos by Rebekah Martin

In July 2018, Hartselle City Schools welcomed a child nutrition director for the first time. Jenny Newton has over ten years of experience teaching students about nutrition in the schools and has goals to make the Hartselle City Schools cafeterias some of the best food around.

Newton says that one of her main goals is to change the stigma of healthy food, and teachign kids that healthy can still taste good. “The biggest thing is I want to focus on our strengths and things that children enjoy eating and making sure that we have those things on the menu on a  regular basis. The biggest thing is we want to have a large amount of children eating in the cafeteria and work on making the food appealing to them as well as stay within our dietary and nutritional guidelines for the state. I really have a passion for trying to teach kids healthy eating and showing them that healthy food can also be tasty food,” Newton said.

For the last 12 years, Newton has worked as a family consumer science teacher in Blount County. She also has earned a masters in educational leadership. One of the rewarding things about family consumer science is teaching something that students can use for the rest of their lives.  “Nutrition is a science that no matter what we do in life, it is going to be a science that we use. It is important for us to have a base knowledge of nutrition, because no matter what they decide to do after a child graduates high school, they are going to eat food, so that is a science they are going to use their whole life. It can have a great effect on their entire lifestyle and if they know how to eat healthy, it can help make their life longer and higher quality,” Newton said.

One of the things that Newton and her staff have already achieved, is increasing the amount of students that are eating breakfast. While in graduate school, Newton conducted a study on the impacts of eating breakfast each morning and is excited that students and teachers will be able to see the benefits. “When children eat something in the morning, they are going to be more willing to learn. They are going to have a better attitude and be able to get along with people better, they are going to have better energy, so that is probably the things I am most proud about. My managers and my cafeteria workers have been working hard to get the breakfast participation up,” Newton said.

During her study, Newton found that breakfast can also significantly impact the learning process. “You see children are more willing to learn. They are less likely to get frustrated when they have a full stomach, it really does affect the attitude to how they react to the learning processes, how they react to their teachers, how they react to their classmates. It is just one of those things that when you get the nutrition you need, it does affect your mood. It goes back to helping in the classroom, because if children are staying out of trouble, then they are not in detention, they are not in the principal’s office, they are not being called out into the hallway, they are sitting there learning,” Newton said.

Newton also plans to begin a new program with the kindergarten classes this semester. “My goal is to talk to the elementary principals about going into the kindergarten classroom because just like anything else, good nutrition is a habit and we start habits at a young age. So I want to start with the kindergarteners and teach them the importance of eating your fruits and vegetables and how good it is for you. I want to talk to them about the importance of water in their diets. That is one thing, the kids don’t realize how important it is to drink water how good it is for you,” Newton said.

Another passion of Newton is making sure that children are not leaving the school hungry. This year, Hartselle City Schools have begun a new program that allows parents to apply for free or reduced lunch all online. “One thing we have done this year is we have had a paperless form that they can fill out online, and the form comes directly to me instead of the child having to get it out of their backpacks and give it to the teacher, teacher send it to the office, the office send it to me. It cuts out a lot of steps so I am able to process and get them on the free and reduced path quicker, but also some parents are self conscious and don’t want other people to know they are having to go through that. That is a way to take that stigma away. No one knows except for me, and that is one thing that has helped our numbers increase this year and I think that is part of it,” Newton said.

Newton says it is helping to make sure that all students are getting the nutrition that they need that makes her job worthwhile. “It is definitely the kids. I went into education because I love kids of all ages. They all have their unique personality. That has always been a special place in my heart, to feed kids and help them understand the knowledge of eating healthy. I definitely have a special place in my heart for the children that sometimes go hungry, and I am hoping that even if you may have a child or two in each school that comes to school hungry, my hope is that we are going to feed them a healthy meal and a tasty meal so that they won’t leave school hungry,” Newton said.