RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS
Teacher and Professor Resources
Are you interested in educating your students about hunger and poverty in our region and in the United States? The Food Bank has a wealth of information and materials for you to use. Educators of all backgrounds are encouraged to download our Hunger Education curriculum to use in your classroom. You can also check out our page on Advocacy and Policy Resources for links to organizations that address hunger.
Organize a food and fund drive
Food and fund drives can be a fun way to get students involved. See our Food and Fund Drives page for information on how to get started.
Bring your students or program participants to the Food Bank of the Southern Tier for a hands-on experience. The Food Bank is proud to offer half-day service-learning opportunities at our main location in Elmira. These experiential sessions include a tour of our warehouse and facility, an age-appropriate Hunger 101 workshop, and a shift volunteering in our production room. We find that these service-learning sessions are very impactful and educational for youth. Families and parents are also encouraged to participate. Visit our Volunteer Page for more information.
Food Bank staff
members and trained Food Bank Hunger Ambassador volunteers are happy to come
into classrooms as guest speakers, presenting programming or general information
about hunger and the work of the Food
Learn About Hunger and Nutrition
- Hunger in the Classroom: A report from Share Our Strength on how hunger impacts child learning.
- USDA's MyPlate provides practical information to individuals, health professionals, nutrition educators, and the food industry to help consumers build healthier diets with resources and tools for dietary assessment, nutrition education, and other user-friendly nutrition information.
- PBS's Documentary "Poor Kids" Frontline documentary explores the economic crisis as it's rarely seen- through the eyes of children.
- Sesame Street's Growing Hope Against Hunger speaks to both children and adults with a story that celebrates community as everyone works to help one another. Documentary stories also present children’s perspectives on food insecurity and illuminate the impact hunger has on families.
Hunger Education Program and Common Core Standards
The pressures on our community’s teachers are ever increasing. In the
face of increased testing, evaluation and emphasis on
standards it can be hard for teachers to make time for “non-traditional” material in the classroom. It is our hope that Hunger
Education program can serve as a tool to educators in their
efforts to reinforce other content and ground their lessons in
In the past, Hunger Education has been used in a variety of “in-classroom” contexts including: family and consumer science classes, high school economics class, service learning projects, and as a high school and middle school elective course.
In an effort to make Hunger Education Program a resource to classroom teachers, we have the following resources:
State Standards for the Hunger Scholars Curriculum:
The Hunger Scholars curriculum has been aligned to Common Core State Standards.
The Food Bank of the Southern Tier has a library of fantastic books related to hunger and poverty for all age levels. If you are interested in having your students do a “Book Review” project where they use the Book Review Form or write more formal reviews of books. We have books to loan classes interested in this project and will then feature your students and their book reviews on our “Reading List & Reviews” website.
Please contact the Community Engagement Coordinator to discuss how we can support you, as teacher, integrate Hunger Education into your classroom.
For more information contact:
Randi Lynn Quackenbush, Community Engagement Coordinator
at 607.796.6061 x4039 or email email@example.com