I've been going to lunch with my kids all week because their behavior was so bad that I felt I needed to be an extra pair of eyes and ears in the lunchroom. While I was a huge fan of Jamie Oliver's miniseries on cafeteria lunches in the US, I hadn't had much experience with public school lunches since, well, I was in the 4th grade.
While the food itself isn't always what I would select as the most appealing, what makes me sad is the small percentage of my class that chooses flavored milk. I have 25 students right now, so it makes the percentage pretty easy to calculate. On my first day in the lunchroom, 1/25 students chose regular milk or as the kids call it "white milk" -- a name which makes it seem like we are so far removed from the actual product of milk, that stuff that comes from a cow, that out children don't even recognize the original.
I told some of them sitting near me that their flavored milk had as much sugar as a liquid candy bar -- at 160 calories, that might only be a small candy bar, but it's just about the same. I know that getting kids to drink any milk at all is a big success, but when the option is available to have "white milk" I do believe that we should encourage children to drink that. The next day, 3/25 students were drinking regular milk. Small successes.
I'm not alone in this debate over school milk. The NY Times just wrote a piece about the debate. I do wonder about the study that says that without the option of flavored milk, students will drink less milk overall.
Why the sudden interest in what my kids eat? Because I'm not being very healthy myself -- I have a pretty particular diet and I have been doing incredibly poorly at following through on it. That, and being surrounded by children with some kind of stomach virus/flu, means that I'm getting sick. We had one 4th grade teacher with a substitute last week and I saw what happened when you don't prepare for a sub -- either with lesson plans or have procedures down. The children acted as though they had not heard of any of the school rules. We have testing this next week that can't be administered by a substitute, so forgive me for not calling you if promised -- I've been trying to save my voice.
Now, to figure out what to do with 24 children while we conduct reading tests all day Monday....
Awww sweetie. Feel better. Take care of yourself. I know its really hard to leave your class with a sub... its horrible to have to deal with it the day after. But just remember, you need to take care of yourself too. Sometimes a day off can do wonders. Good luck with all the assessments you have to administer.
ReplyDeleteAnd on the topic of healthy food, the school I am working for now has a VERY strict no junk food policy. Instructors cannot drink soda, eat chips or candy in front of kids and students are not allowed to bring in anything unhealthy at all or its straight in the trash. Coming from a school where students brought hot chips for breakfast, I find this really intriguing. It will be interesting to see what happens once students start. However, I am totally going to miss when a kid has a birthday and brings in cupcakes. That, to me, is on the list of the top 10 positive things about teaching.