You’ve probably had them in your classroom — students who start the day off fidgety and irritable, unable to concentrate and complaining of a stomach ache. They’ve gone without a healthy breakfast and arrive in your classroom hungry and distracted, empty stomachs growling.
Colleen Morris, a first grade reading teacher at Guilford Elementary in Howard County, encounters these children every day.
“I’ll bring in food each morning so that I can give it to the kids who tell me they’re hungry,” she says.
A new program called “Breakfast in the Classroom” aims to help curb that hunger and help all students start the school day ready to learn.
Launched by Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom — a partnership of the National Education Association Health Information Network, Food Research and Action Center, National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation, and School Nutrition Foundation — and funded by the Walmart Foundation, the program moves the morning meal from the cafeteria to the classroom and serves it free of charge to all students after the opening bell so that more kids can eat breakfast.
Even though most schools participate in the federal School Breakfast Program, fewer than half of children who are eligible for a free or reduced-price breakfast are eating it. Some arrive too late because of bus schedules or parents dropping them off late. Others want to spend time on the playground instead of at a table in the cafeteria. And then there are those who want to avoid the stigma of being labeled “low income” by participating in the traditional cafeteria-based, before school breakfast program.
“Breakfast in the Classroom removes the barriers to participation. It’s served after the opening bell rather than before the day begins, and is served to all students free of charge,” says NEA Health Information Network Executive Director Jerry Newberry. “Our goal is to offer all students a healthy, balanced breakfast so that they are ready and able to learn. No child should start the day hungry.”
Research shows that eating breakfast at school increases concentration, comprehension, and memory, and decreases absenteeism, late arrivals, and visits to the school nurse. Students who eat breakfast perform better on tests, increase achievement in math and reading, and also have fewer behavior problems.
Breakfast in the Classroom launched in January 2011 in five high-need districts around the country — Dallas Independent School District in Texas; Little Rock School District in Arkansas; Memphis City Schools in Tennessee; Orange County Public Schools in Florida; and, in Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland.
“The Breakfast in the Classroom pilot program is really about learning lessons from these five districts,” says Lisa Sharma, NEA HIN’s Program Coordinator for Nutrition, Hunger and Physical Activity. “Our experiences the first year will help us determine best practices to improve and expand the program to more public schools around the country.”
For more information about Breakfast in the Classroom visit www.breakfastintheclassroom.org.