In the comments area to the right Jackson has posted an elegantly composed comment concerning our current topic, the connection between student diet/ eating habits and behavior. It is really as basic as he states, it's a matter of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the plight of low socioeconomic families. Teachers need to keep in this mind—it will enhance their empathy toward students.
In all of the student behavior interventions I have done, it has been my habit to ask a lot of questions of the student first. We usually take a walk, a long walk and I ask a lot of seemingly unrelated questions. I always ask first, "Did you eat breakfast?" The answer is always, "No". We then have a discussion about an eating plan as a part of the intervention. I also spend the lunch time while I am at a school site looking at the school lunch and what has been consumed and what has made it's way into the trash or onto the ground. You can learn a lot about any population by looking at what they throw away.
In California we have strict regulations on what goes into a school breakfast and a school lunch. Any guess how many bananas I can collect out of the trash and off of the ground? It's a big number. Many of our children have never been taught how to eat and why it is vital to thier health and life success. Last year I was doing a series of demonstration science lessons at a middle school and the topic was macromolecules. It was a perfect opportunity to teach about nutrition. The unit began on Friday. I asked the class to write down everything they ate over the weekend as homework. I said that on Monday we would have a look at what everyone had written down. On Monday their "diet journals" contained entries such as, "Burger King", "Jack-In-the-Box", "Mc Donalds"—no kidding. Some had entries that actually named a food item, like pizza.
So, never mind the fact that families don't sit down and eat dinner together and discuss the events of the day, it's a bigger social crisis than that. The crisis (both physiological and psychological) bleeds over into the classroom. We can all work on this.
This year I am starting an organic garden at a middle school in a low socioeconomic region of Southern California. I know this is nothing new, nothing innovative, but it is important and it will be new and innovative for the middle school students involved. I'll keep you posted.
As always, your thoughts and "recipes" are welcome.
Stef
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Hi Stef,
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind, I will selfishly ask a classroom management question that's in a different direction.
It bothers me when the end of a class period comes and the bell rings and the students rush out. This book I'm reading (The First Days of School) is great and provides right-on-target suggestions for most management problems, but in this case it is advocating a strict "the teacher dismisses the class, not the bell" approach which I feel is not realistic.
The problem is that the students have legitimate reasons (I think) for rushing out. The time to get from one class to the next is short, 6 minutes, we have a huge high school and the queue to use the restrooms is often very long. I have thought of dismissing the class before the bell rings, but I suspect I would get in trouble with the administration.
I feel a need to compromise on this one, but in a a way where I'm still in charge, not the students.
Any suggestions? Maybe some sort of agreement with the students? "Yes, you can rush out, but let's make an organized rush..."???
Peter Halverson
PS: This problem is closely related to the problem of students being tardy, and that of students desperately needing to "go" 15 minutes into the class.