I usually ate school lunch in elementary school (and what you'd call middle school now). I don't remember it being super good or super bad, but -- as one of five children -- I was taught to eat what was put in front of me without question.
What is a hot or cold pack?
A number of people have commented that not all families can afford breakfast. Another issue is that some parents don't have the time /energy to prepare a breakfast for kids.
I know that sounds lazy, but I've been aware of more than a few families -- thinking mostly of single mothers -- who are working multiple jobs just to keep a roof over the kids' heads, and they let important things go because they only have so many hours in the day.
Other families go periods of time without refrigeration or stoves.
I'm a teacher too. Our breakfast offerings are garbage. They offer one hot item for breakfast -- it might be French toast sticks or a frozen sausage biscuit. The other choices are a single Pop Tart (they actually make them in singles) or a pack of small powdered-sugar doughnuts.
These are the super-processed type of breakfast that keep kids from being hungry -- but are actually a negative in terms of health.
Several Covid comments:
- During Covid all students in NC were eligible for free breakfast and lunch regardless of their income.
- When our kids were at home, our school cafeteria ladies prepared meals and families could drive up and get meals from the school's front door ... they also sent out lunch ladies on the busses, and they'd announce ahead of time, "Monday and Thursday we'll be at this church at 10:30, then the
Walmart parking lot at 11:30 ..." They gave out 2-3 days of meals at a time so families didn't have to pick up every day.
- When we "went home" for Covid, a number of my students (high schoolers) expressed concern about access to free school food, saying they really depend upon it.
In theory, I agree that parents should be responsible for feeding their own children, but -- in reality -- not all parents are able (or even willing) to feed their children on a regular basis.
My father, a lukewarm Catholic, was fairly strict about fish on Fridays. This was never a religious teaching from the Bible; rather, it began to manage an economic need.
- School lunch and classroom supplies come out of different pockets.
- We aren't saving money by not buying textbooks. We use inexpensive Chromebooks, but they cost $275 each (and chargers are $40) and seem to have a lifespan of about two years. We're also charging those Chromebooks every day, which isn't free.
- Teachers are still making copies.
A lot of people really don't know about nutrition.
One of the best classes I took in college was
Nutrition for Teachers. My mom fed us pretty well, but I really learned a lot in that class.
I agree with that.
During exams (high school) our kids order lunches /have them delivered to the classrooms. It was an eye-opener for me:
- Kids are required to take the whole meal, even if they aren't going to eat it all. The meals were pretty large, I thought.
- Kids who don't like milk are still required to take it.
- Kids who only want a drink are still required to take the whole meal.
I started asking the kids to leave with me any packaged, unopened items -- bags of apple slices, dried cranberries, cartons of milk -- and I put them into the teachers' refrigerator for the next day's kids.
Now, to be fair, when I was in elementary school (for 8 years -- we had no middle school and were better for it), we only had gym twice a week. That meant twice a week we were with a gym teacher who taught us the rules of baseball, etc. or led us through structured activities in the gym: I loved square dancing and the parachute.
BUT the other three days of the week we walked across a small street to the town's park and had a solid hour of unstructured recess on the playground -- usually with several other classes. We had physical play every day.
I don't remember what we did on rainy days.
Politics and economics.
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