My Community Rotation

My first day of my community rotation finally arrived. I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect because it was my first rotation in the Larkin Dietetic Internship program. At that point, I had been reading blogs and social media posts about other dietetic internship programs so I went in afraid and fearing the worst. Plot twist: My community rotation ended up being one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Every great rotation starts with a great preceptor and I believe that I was blessed with a preceptor who is extremely passionate about her job and passionate about precepting.

My preceptor, Melissa Farrello, is the owner of Fruity Veggie Nutrition, LLC. She is a nutrition consultant for childcare centers and worksite wellness. During my time with Melissa, I mostly got to see the childcare aspect. It was a very dynamic work environment and there was always something new that came up everyday.

I was able to see and help with all the work that goes into designing menus for new and existing childcare centers to meet USDA guidelines. I saw the different issues that the childcare centers would have with different caterers, especially regarding children who have food allergies. I attended several parent meetings regarding children diagnosed with genetic disorders and other conditions. That helped me see the concern that those parents can have about their children and how having access to a registered dietitian makes their lives a lot less stressful. I also got to see Melissa in action when doing much-needed, nutrition-related teacher and parent training.

For National Nutrition Month, we did food demos with the parents about quick, healthy breakfasts they can make for the children. This was absolutely essential because we saw a few children entering the classrooms with a bag of fast food or a bag chips to have for breakfast. We got to talk to some of these parents to try to understand their barriers to offering the child a healthy breakfast. A lot of them were pleasantly surprised to see that overnight oats were delicious, healthy and quick to make. We even got to make these yummy energy bites for a homeless shelter so that we could feature the nonperishable foods that they were receiving from the food pantry.

The part of the rotation that helped me grow the most was doing 30-minute nutrition activities with the children for National Nutrition Month. Melissa was very hands-off with this activity so I had to come up with a great activity that I could do with 1-5 year olds. My activity was to get them to identify the fruits and veggies, discuss characteristics about them, and sort them. I found that my first lesson was very difficult partly because I am not great at interacting with children, let alone a classroom full of them. I also had very high expectations for what I expected these children to know and what they could do. The children in the 1-2 year old classrooms had to do the activity differently than the 3-5 year old classrooms because of major developmental differences. With guidance from Melissa, I had to adjust my activity accordingly and tried again. After every activity, I identified and updated what I needed to change before I got to work with the next group. By my 10th activity, I felt like a total expert at getting the children to engage with me. Most importantly, I felt like they were learning and able to express themselves about particular fruits and veggies.