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Happy Labor Day! Here’s to all our country’s hard workers, past and present!
1) Check out this infograph about sugar. I excerpted just a part of it above. Mind blowing!
2) Kids still need more time to eat their lunch!
3) Brilliant idea for “food hubs” to connect local farmers with school districts in their community.
I am all for longer lunches with the chance to socialize and eat their food. Our kids never got to socialize when I taught elementary school. We had them only 4 to a huge table spread out and only given 20 minutes at the most, some days, to eat. We also weren’t allowed to have recess (it was scheduled out along with nap time for the kindergarteners) and by the time they got me in the art room the kids had heart burn, burnt out from work, or starving because they ate soo early. It wasn’t though at the school I taught at that this happened on a daily basis but it happened at other schools across our district.
Sarah, as a (former) teacher, how would you suggest starting a discussion with school district officials about longer lunchtimes, when it would likely mean a longer school day, which would bring up issues of teacher pay & contracts?
Is there any way around that part of the issue?
I know in the building I work at there would still be some other roadblocks, because the building doesn’t have a large enough cafeteria. If the students were in the cafeteria longer, it would probably start to push the lunch times into the very early/very late zones, which is also a problem.
Bus schedule changes also come up as a roadblock to changes to the daily schedules.
Easy….cut out 10 minutes of a 2 hour reading class (our school has this) and tack it onto lunch and recess….all these kids do is work, work, work…as we do as adults. they need to socialize and blow off some steam! We have so much homework it is just incredible. When I work all day, I come home and do housework at the house…but I don’t take my job home with me, thank goodness! Why should our kids, especially from kindergarten?
I wonder if it could be that easy?
Honestly, I’m not knowledgeable about regulations about the school day, if there are requirements for instructional time (I’d guess there are!).
Again, I hope Sarah or someone with knowledge of those kind of regulations can answer.
Of course, while those of us here are pushing for more time for lunches, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there are people just as dedicated to making sure kids get enough time for active sports, visual arts, music and more.
I’d suggest that without nutrition (which I do think that school meals could fulfill, with buy-in from more support sources) and activity (recess and physical education time) the rest of the educational day suffers, but…again, I’m sure there are those that would have a different opinion. What’s the perfect balance & how do we choose who gets it their way?
I don’t really have an answer to making lunches longer, but how about using the time more efficiently? In our K-5 school, we had 3 lunches. K is only half day, so 1st and 2nd ate together, 3rd and 4th together and 5th by themselves. The lunch lines were long, the helpers couldn’t really get around to everyone, it was too loud, and it was hard to watch everyone. So now, 1st grade goes first, by themselves. 15 minutes later, 2nd grade comes in. By this time, the lunch lines are open, and face it, kids have pretty much eaten what they are going to eat. Give the 2nd grade lunch lines a few minutes to wind down so there’s no traffic jams and then 1st grade goes to the trash cans and then outside. They get less congestion on the play ground, 2nd grade now has the aides’ full attention. Then 3rd grade makes their way in and they follow the same rotation. This has worked very well in our school.