REVOLT OF THE LUNCH LADIES
News item: Workers who serve meals in Chicago Public Schools say the majority of kids are not eating the healthful new foods on the cafeteria menu, according to a confidential survey released Tuesday. Oh, the humanity! That’s shocking, kids dislike healthy foods?
The survey was filled out by 436 lunch ladies. The lunch ladies also complained that they had “no input on the recipes or food”. Some were quoted as saying, ” serving on the frontline, we have a unique perspective on these changes. We see the schoolchildren of Chicago every day. We put food on their plates and we see what gets left in the trash”.
Oh my, who do these lunch ladies think they are, teachers? “No input”, “serving on the frontline”, “unique perspective”, “see the children daily”. Please, lunch ladies, teachers say those things all the time and yet have little or no say in curriculum, discipline policies, teaching methods, etc. If teachers have little input in THEIR jobs, how in the world did you think you would have input in yours? No, my dear lunch ladies, every school decision must be left to the “experts”. Those are the people who have very little contact with real children, but absolutely know what works best for them. Welcome to the teachers’ world. Now, get back in the cafeteria and do your job. “Input” indeed!
The lunch ladies also had the naiveté to complain that they “rarely or never” see principals eating school lunch. Oh, ladies, please, seeing a principal in a school lunchroom is as rare as seeing a whooping crane in downtown Chicago. Expecting them to eat the same food as the students? I must say, you lunch ladies are making me chuckle more than I have in quite some time.
Here is what needs to be done in order to get the students to eat the healthy foods. You need to understand that today’s students must have “positive motivation” before they will do ANYTHING! All teachers must eat their lunch with the students and establish a “points system” that would reward students for eating the healthy food. The teachers simply spend their lunch time marking down which students eat the healthy food. The more healthy food a student eats, the more points he or she earns. The points then can be redeemed for ice cream or prizes of various types. I don’t want to hear from teachers complaining about this. You need to get out of the teacher’s lounge and into the cafeteria and do what you do best, MOTIVATE! Remember my fellow teachers, you are living in the “whatever it takes” world of education. Now get out there and do “whatever it takes” to get students to eat healthy.
Years ago, it was parents who made sure that kids ate healthy, but that’s asking too much of our modern parents. In addition, we can’t trust parents to properly motivate their children. What if a parent were to use fear as a motivator? We must never go back to motivating children the way my generation of kids was motivated. When I was a child, and wasn’t eating my vegetables, my parents would say something like,” if you don’t stop crying and finish your vegetables, you won’t be able to sit down for a week”. Or perhaps, ” you’re going to sit at this table until you eat every last pea on your plate”. Actually, there was an occasional positive tone to the motivation, such as, “eat your spinach, don’t you want to be strong like Popeye the Sailor Man”? Somehow, that never seemed to work with me as well as the ,”won’t be able to sit down for a week”.
