This week's healthy schools highlights

Greeley students participate in healthy schools challenge

More important and satisfying than American Idol, voting is now live online for the national Recipes for Healthy Kids Challenge, and Winograd K-8 School is among the participants. The competition, which is part of the Let’s Move initiative in association with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is focused on encouraging school nutrition staff, students, parents and community members to create tasty, healthy, exciting new recipes for school lunch menus across the country.

Some Winograd eighth graders created a chicken and pasta dish they call Chic’ Penne, and their recipe in now among five national semifinalists in the whole grains category of the contest.

In the next few weeks a contest sponsor will be in Greeley for on-site judging of the recipe, which was written to be made both for family servings as well as in large, school-cafeteria batches. If the Winograd team members’ work is chosen as a finalist, they will be invited to the White House to compete in a cook-off to determine the grand prize winner.

In the meantime, anyone can vote online for Winograd recipe at Recipes for Healthy Kids Challenge. A ‘Popular Choice’ recipe will be awarded to the recipe with the most online votes.  Currently the Winograd recipe is trailing a Bellingham, Mass., recipe by more than 200 votes on the whole grains section of the website.

The full recipe for Chic’ Penne, complete with nutrition facts, is available on the website.

Acne may blemish teens’ emotional lives, too

A new review confirms something that teens have always known: pimples, low self-esteem and depression often go hand-in-hand. Read more in U.S. News.

APS schools taking part in food pantry program

Two elementary schools in the Aurora Public Schools District will take part in a national food pantry program designed to fight childhood hunger. Read more in the Aurora Sentinel.

School clinics key as child poverty grows

AURORA — The 10-year-old Ethiopian twins arrived in Colorado in September after growing up in a refugee camp in Kenya.

Their mother has no car and just had open heart surgery earlier this month. Their father remains in Ethiopia. Despite these complications, it’s time for the  fourth-graders to receive well-child checkups, updated immunizations and have their sight and hearing checked. Read more in Health Policy Solutions.

Parenting videos now archived

Boulder Valley School District’s Pathways to Parenting Success series is archiving videos of its parenting workshops so anyone can benefit from them – regardless of where they live. Click on Pathways to Parenting Success to view video clips of workshops on dealing with depression and suicide, the changing role of technology among youth (appropriately titled “You-Twit-Face”), developing self esteem in your child, and how to talk so your children will listen.

Find listings of other events in the series by clicking on Boulder Psychological Services.

About our First Person series:

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.