Printer-friendly versionIf you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, you might remember the scene in which Scout beats up Walter Cunningham in the schoolyard. It’s the first day of school and Scout’s teacher, Miss Caroline, is not from Maycomb. She doesn’t understand just how hard the Great Depression has hit the farmers of southern Alabama. So she innocently offers Walter a quarter to buy lunch in town. He refuses. As Scout explains he’s a Cunningham, and Cunninghams never take anything they can’t pay back. Every student at my school is eligible for free lunch this year, so they understand Walter’s situation. But what they don’t understand is “why other students get to go off campus for lunch and we don’t?”
Little do my students realize being able to eat lunch on campus was once a sign of progress. In 1946, the first version of the National School Lunch Act was created as a way to make use of the surplus foods farmers produced but were unable to sell. This benefitted many hungry children and, of course, the educators trying to teach them. Every teacher knows that a hungry student has a shorter attention span, feels alternately sleepy and agitated and may even be developmentally delayed if malnourished. Had Walter started school just a few years later, he might have been able to benefit from the National School Lunch Act with little shame.
My students would maybe appreciate their on-campus lunch better if they understood the history. They might be shocked to learn that it wasn’t always possible to eat breakfast, lunch and even an after-school snack on campus. But more importantly, students would embrace their meals if those meals seemed more like food. No ill intent is meant for the hard-working employees of school cafeterias who have no control over the menu. But students are hard pressed to believe that school lunch is any healthier than the fast food options they prefer. This year I’ve seen more and more students skip lunch altogether. Even worse, they stock up on junk food from the corner store before coming to school. At least there they have choice over what junk they put in their body.
The seniors at our school have become so fed up with lunchtime that they have begun selling homemade food. Some days there’s posole. Other days papusas. We’ve seen tostadas and agua frescas, fresh fruit with chile. They know that in nearby Berkeley, a district with many low-income students as well, schools have a much better school lunch program piloted by the mother of California cuisine Alice Waters herself. A few years ago I took a group of students on a field trip to the Edible Schoolyard garden at Martin Luther King Middle School. My students wandered the grounds of the lush and beautiful garden, saw the outdoor wood-fired pizza oven and toured the immaculate kitchen stations used for food preparation and instruction. “Why can’t we have this,” they asked.
Early federal aid for school lunches states that “the children who could not pay for their meals would not be segregated or discriminated against and would not be identified to their peers.” But there’s a difference between what kids eat at affluent schools and what they eat at Title I schools like the one where I teach. At nearby Piedmont High School, the only secondary building in the affluent city of Piedmont, students have the option of eating at the Piper Café. One of the daily options is a spinach salad with dried cranberries, red onion, feta and balsamic vinaigrette. At our school, students can have an iceberg lettuce salad with ranch dressing. Food discrimination is alive and well.
Why can’t every child have healthy and delicious options at school? This is the question President and Mrs. Obama have been asking too, which led to the signing of the new National Hunger-Free Kids Act last month. Hopefully this legislation will begin to change the sad reality of school lunch in poor schools.
If your school already has a healthy school lunch program, what did it take to make it happen? Hungry students and their teachers want to know.
Thomas is an English teacher in California.
Comments
As a teacher, I eat school
As a teacher, I eat school lunch, at most, once a week. And every time I do students ask, "Why is your lunch so much better than ours?" As if my teacher lunch, of not-so-healthy food is a gourmet meal. I see students pick through their free breakfast and lunch, trying to salvage what is edible, while the rest ends up in the trash. The situation is even more grim at schools that do not have the luxury of a kitchen that prepares the food, who instead have to rely on packaged food that's sent from another site (which your school may still receive).
I also see kids run to the local AM/PM and return with fattening chips and sugary drinks to eat as their "lunch." Kids need to not only be taught about healthy eating, but also have those options available to them at school so they can begin to practice it. It would be like teaching kids how to properly write and format their essays on the computer and then saying, "Okay, now write it with a pencil and paper" because all of the computers are broken. Only when we provide them the means to eat healthier will it eventually become a part of their lifestyle, and hopefully they can then pass the healthy tips on to their families and loved ones.
Great piece, Jill. And thanks for enlightening me about the National School Lunch Act, which can add to my Great Depression curriculum.
Steve, thanks for your
Steve, thanks for your comments. Why would the teacher lunch be different than the student lunch? Seems if they can do a slightly nicer lunch for some, then they should for all. I'm glad to know I've given you something for your Great Depression curriculum!
I agree, Jill: It's amazing
I agree, Jill: It's amazing what a good, healthy lunch can do for kids! The students at the (private) school where I teach have a full-time chef and kitchen staff. The chef used to be the head-chef at the Hyatt here in town. Our foods are made fresh, with whole ingredients, each day. It's not cheap. But I can see the difference in the kids' willingness to eat, and their energy/memory retention, etc. I hope the new act makes a difference for y(our) kids, too!
Brooke, how much of the
Brooke, how much of the students' tuition goes to their meal plan? Do all students participate in school meals?
The kids' tuition is $18,000
The kids' tuition is $18,000 a year, but none of that goes towards food. Parents need to buy lunch credits directly from the chef/kitchen crew, and his food/cafeteria is seen as a separate entity from the school (like the Piedmont High arrangement with the cafe, I imagine). It's about $200 per month, if they get the full lunch each day. I think this is expensive, but at least the food is good (I eat 'school lunch' every day). Fortunately, teachers get a discount... because we aren't the kids of CEOs, politicians, and very wealthy people. I think it's sad that this kind of money seems to be required for healthy lunches in school, but I don't see how it could be done in a setting where the budget is such a huge concern (as in public schools).
This is an excellent article
This is an excellent article on a fascinating topic! Since reimbursement is based per student and you are at a smaller school, it seems that the whole district would have to be unified together. Since your school is in the middle of Foodland USA, perhaps partnering with a farm or a cooking school would get you the change you need. I think, alas, the only answer to changing things is a lot of noise from parents or taxpayers. Here in Alaska all students are provided with a free lunch, although it rarely includes fresh produce.
The same Ann Cooper (the Renegade Lunch Lady) mentioned in your Berkeley School District link actually has an excellent website that gives a step-by-step guide to getting salad bars and healthy food in to school cafeterias: http://www.thelunchbox.org.
It would be intersting to find out what your school district chooses to spend on food assistance. As one of your links points out, Berkeley chooses to spend $1.40 per student, which is 50 to 60 cents above what they're reimbursed. So it's really a question of district financial priorities it seems.
This is only the tip of the iceberg lettuce when it comes to federally funded food discrimination. The flip side is about choice, which it seems your students don't have. What about families/people who are using WIC or food stamps? Should they be allowed to purchase sugary snacks or potato chips? And have you ever eaten 'food aid' food? It's USDA surplus food, which means purchased in bulk not resaleable grade B food. It's part of what the US sends as food aid abroad: http://www.fas.usda.gov/food-aid.asp. It's about helping farmers by purchasing surplus (not that farmers shouldn't be given help), not giving people nutrition.
Simply because people receive food aid or assistance should not mean they are forced to eat 'second class' food. Your article also points out the contrast between the cuisines of your largely immigration student body and the qintessential 'American' lunch: iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing. Does your school have 'ethnic days'? Does it consist of tacos to represent Mexican cuisine and sweet and sour chicken for Chinese cuisine?? Food can be a powerful tool of assimilation.
Jill, My charter school can
Jill,
My charter school can choose which food service to contract with, and we've decided to be a "healthy food" school, which means no cupcakes for birthday parties, no candy at Halloween, and never ever any hot cheetos. The families know that if they send these items to school for lunch, snack, or class parties, they will be thrown in the garbage. A little harsh, but perhaps a move in the right direction?
We've contracted with Revolution Foods and other healthy food companies, but the kids hate the food. Too much whole grain, too many cooked vegetables they've never eaten before. They have greasy pizza (on whole-wheat crust that gets tossed) on Fridays, but other than that, I, too, have seen MANY kids refuse lunches because they're "nasty."
I wish I could say that simply providing healthier food is the solution. I wonder if de-institutionalizing the school food-service might be better. I remember when the cafeteria staff actually cooked food from scratch in the kitchen! It wasn't always something I wanted to eat, but it was fresh and wrapper-free.