Student Feedback Toolkit Tools for Conducting Surveys and Listening Sessions for School Meals with High School-Aged Students

Introduction

This toolkit is for the purpose of engaging high-school students and gathering their feedback to improve school meals.

A recent study by No Kid Hungry and FM3 found that 87% of teenagers (ages 12-18) would be more likely to participate in school meals if they knew their school gathered feedback from students about how to improve them. This is a great opportunity to gather student input and recommendations to help increase student engagement in school meals and improve program participation.

Teens reported that they prefer providing feedback through anonymous surveys and suggestion boxes. However, other methods of interest included small group discussions, sometimes referred to as listening sessions. In this toolkit, we have provided both methods of sampling students through surveys and listening sessions. We utilized both methods when working with two school divisions in Virginia, to help inform the school nutrition department and provide as much insight as possible to help understand and improve participation.

We hope you'll use the following guide to engage students in your school meal programs!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click on the links below to go directly to each section:

1. School Meals Surveys
2. Listening Sessions
3. Additional Resources

SCHOOL MEALS SURVEY

Before conducting listening sessions, a great place to start gathering feedback from students is through a survey. Surveys are easy and adaptable for multiple reasons:

• They allow students to provide pointed feedback on specific menu items and cafeteria logistics, in an anonymous format without social pressure or repercussions.
• Surveys reach a larger audience than listening sessions, making them the perfect place to seek mass feedback on menu offerings and service models.
• They provide students an opportunity to self identify if they would like to be engaged in listening sessions down the road.
• You can market the survey across multiple channels such as morning announcements, flyers/table cards, and nudges from teachers and administrators.

You can view our sample survey in Google Forms below. If you need a tutorial for google forms, please use this link.

Click below to view our template flyer and generate a QR code for your own survey.

If you need a tutorial for making your own QR code, please use this link.

LISTENING SESSIONS

Once you've conducted a survey and are ready to gather some more in-depth feedback from students, listening sessions are a great next step. This format allows students to discuss their thoughts and beliefs with a facilitator and their peers, helping them expand upon each other's ideas and even voice differences in opinions.

BRINGING ALONG STAKEHOLDERS

The critical first step in gathering student feedback on school meals is bringing along all of the involved parties. In this scenario, if you are a school nutrition office or a supporting community organization, you should seek support and involvement from the following:

• The School Nutrition Team - Most importantly, you will need buy in from the school nutrition director, cafeteria manager, and other cafeteria staff. The School Nutrition Team is responsible for implementing school nutrition programs and can benefit the most from the information shared during a listening session.
• School Administrators - Beyond the walls of the cafeteria, you will also want to make sure you have permission and approval from the school principal. A principal's involvement will help to ease the process of identifying students and potentially pulling them from class for a listening session.
• Students - These are your amazing participants! You'll want students to self identify either to cafeteria staff or in a survey, this way you will speak to interested students that have already bought in to the opportunity to provide feedback.

To initiate communications with principals and students, we have drafted email templates for these specific stakeholders.

ORGANIZING THE LISTENING SESSIONS

In our experience, we have found the ideal listening session should have between 5-8 students and last 45 minutes to an hour. This format works well with both the depth and focus of the discussion, but duration and/or size can be modified to fit your needs.

Because students are providing their valuable feedback, you want to be certain to pay them for their time and consideration. We recommend offering gift cards ($10-$25) to your students for their participation.

Hosting a listening session with students requires planning and careful consideration, and students may not feel inherently safe or comfortable in the setting. We have compiled a list of recommendations and practices for creating a safe, equitable, and repercussion-free space for students to ensure that they are providing honest and open feedback on the school meals programs.

Additionally, we also have pulled together a discussion framework for the school meals listening sessions. You can view and download our discussion guide below to help generate ideas and questions for feedback you want to seek from your students.

Last, you can view this example from Greensville County Public Schools in Virginia, highlighting some of the feedback that students provided and providing actionable next steps. After our listening sessions, MaRendia Garner, School Nutrition Director, shared the following:

"I was interested in knowing why breakfast participation, particularly at our high school, was extremely low. Working with No Kid Hungry allowed us to get a true student perspective without students being reserved with their opinions."