cafeteria crisis

My second week in fourth grade comes to a close. This week I taught all the math lessons (bar graphs to line plots) and some of the social studies (Pennsylvania) and the read aloud on the carpet (James and the Giant Peach).

Spending a day with 24 fourth graders, you really get to know them. It's kind of like living together. But how well do you really know someone until you eat with them? This week I made a point of investigating just what's going down in that little cafeteria tucked under the stairs on the first floor. What are the kids who wiggle and lack focus eating? What are the hand-raisers and alert kids eating? What are the Ritalin kids eating?

I am the class escourt. I bring them to art, then bring them back. Bring them to music, then bring them back. Bring them to gym, them bring them back. And since I bring them to lunch, I spend a minute and check out the scene.

Some things haven't changed; crabby lunch ladies, freezers with limited milk and ice cream choices, popular pizza days, melting bowls of red jell-o and that remarkable smell of bleach and meat. Some noticeable changes are a pretty good salad bar, a segregated peanut free table for those who are allergic and half a dozen hovering cafeteria "aides."

I wasn't surprised to see that those who brown bagged it had some good looking lunches- multigrain bread sandwiches with veggies, tiny thermos with soup, sticks of carrots, baggies of nuts and tupperware filled with fresh fruit. B, our wiggliest kid for whom a behavior plan was just inititiated, brought his lunch. But his mom packed a Lunchable inside a brown paper bag. B's lunch was a stack of crackers, cheddar cheese, salty ham and a Reeses Peanut Butter cup. M, one of the two Ritalin kids, eats only organic foods and enjoys organic applesauce, yogurt and a wrap.

However, the majority of the students buy lunch. No one visited the salad bar, instead trays were filled with a single hot dog and a cookie, greasy slice of pizza and a cookie, grilled cheese and a miniature bowl of jell-o. The landscape of these lunchers was a field of faded yellow trays and bland food choices: no greens, no reds, no grape, no peach, no pith, no pulp, no pits nor seeds.

Is this why we struggle after lunch through the beginning of language arts, why attention fades through guided reading? B is always worse after lunch while our healthy eaters seem to pick up steam. I can't help thinking about the documentary Supersize Me when Morgan Spurlock visits an elementary school cafeteria. I'd like to show the film in class. We've had a few discussions about McDonald's around my desk. I'm reading Fast Food Nation and it's a conversation piece. Some of the kids really understand how bad McDonald's food is for them. Something new for them to think about is the idea that McDonald's targets them with toys and playgrounds and clowns. This is the age when kids should become media savvy. They should be alert to the methods used by toy and candy companies that advertise during their Saturday morning and after-school cartoons. Students should be able to understand their power of choice. They will learn to resist the globalized corporate agenda and see the benefits of a locally grown and supported economy.

And now, slowly and quietly, I descend from my soapbox.