Making Lunch an Integral Part of Education

In his article “Rethinking Lunchtime: Making Lunch an Integral Part of Education,” Michael K. Stone writes about the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative (SLI) that has been recently implemented at John Muir Elementary School in Berkeley, California. The Berkeley Unified School District, the Chez Panisse Foundation, and the Center of Ecoliteracy combined forces in “an effort to design and implement curriculum and food service innovations in Berkeley public schools” (19). The catalyst for this initiative at John Muir Elementary was that students were eating poorly - not enough and unhealthily - and this was affecting both their attitudes and their learning. As money was too tight to completely redesign the district food service, “they needed a starting place, something they could do that didn’t require extra money but had high visibility and good prospects for early success” (20). The faculty members came to an agreement that they would readjust the designated lunchtime hours so that they were during educational hours; in other words, students would eat their lunches as teachers conducted a lesson. This readjustment allowed students more time to spend being socially and physically active during their breaks. After a period of time, faculty members were able to deduce this simple equation: more time eating + more time playing = more ready to learn.

The results of this school-wide experiment were so positive that it didn’t stop at just rearranged schedules. An instructional garden was built on the school grounds and curriculum was modified to accommodate this new educational tool. These kinds of tools are exactly what education needs. Working with the environment, technologies, and other means that encourage students to be active participants of their learning are crucial for effective learning to take place. Stone is quoting John Dewey when he writes: “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and when the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, learning naturally results” (21). This quotation should be a mantra for all educators. The face of education is in the midst of changes - changes directly in accordance with Dewey’s line of thinking. Teacher Education programs are promoting methods and styles of teaching that its students have never had a chance to experience themselves. In other words, education is undergoing a major facelift. As it is being reshaped and revamped, it will hopefully no longer look like its fifty year old counterpart.

Learning by experience is the most valuable kind of learning. Interest is part of what students need in order to be able to absorb and to synthesize information, and what better way to interest students than to have them be proactive in their learning. The instructional garden at John Muir Elementary offers students just that – they “help tend soil, plant seeds, care for the plants and then harvest their crops, which often become ingredients for seasonal dishes that they help prepare in the kitchen classroom.” This opens a window of opportunity for students to learn “where food comes from, about nutrition, natural cycles and processes, the importance of conserving water and soil [and] such topics as regional and industrial food systems” (21).  This type of hands-on experience has the potential to teach students so much more than any lesson in a classroom setting could hope to. This “curricular umbrella” is the perfect tool in facilitating the integration of subjects. The benefits of integrating topics such as food, health, environment, music, fashion, architecture, sports, and other facets of culture are incontrovertible. The experiences that we have in the real world are never isolated by topic, and since our goal as educators is to prepare our students for the real world, the importance of integration among subjects in schools could not be more clear.

Not all schools will receive the kind of funding or support - both from outside sources and amongst faculty members - that John Muir Elementary was fortunate enough to garner; however, Stone makes a valid point when he states that “for schools to initiate change, what is most often needed is a first step that requires no new funding and no waiting for outside resources to appear” (23). We need to take initiative as passionate, dedicated and involved educators. This could mean rearranging designated lunch and recess times, as done by John Muir Elementary, or planting a class garden (even if funding dictates that it has to start small).

Topics such as music, fashion, art, architecture, and food can be used as a bridge - a bridge that connects history to present to future; a bridge that connects diverse cultures; a bridge that connects individuals to society. They are unifying themes that will not only appeal to students’ interest - which is vital to their learning - but they will also encourage critical thinking. Another inspirational quotation that Stone uses to convey his argument comes from Stephen Rutherford, when he states that “the roadblock to change was only tradition or only what people might say can’t be done”(23). The roadblock of traditional teaching methods such as rote learning and memorization needs to be demolished. That road needs to be cleared for new, innovative ways of teaching.  Stepping out of the box as an educator and developing previously unused strategies is something that may seem daunting, especially to new teachers coming out of the their respective Education programs; so, to them (to myself) and to anyone else who has ever felt afraid to pursue something that had seemed unattainable, here is one last inspirational saying: professionals built the Titanic; amateurs built the Ark. We don’t need to be professionals to make a difference; we just need to be dedicated and passionate amateurs.  

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Reference

Stone, M. K. (2008-09). Rethinking Lunchtime: Making Lunch an Integral Part of Education. Green Teacher, 84, 19-23.