One of the observations I've made at the "alternative" high school that I work at is the appalling nutrition of the young adults that attend. Their main caloric intake seems to be from sugar and bags of junk food snacks. The kids are constantly eating and drinking sugary and fatty crap, and I believe it's a factor, besides the other chemical influences, and the general chaos in most of their lives, in their overall difficult behavior.We are, of course, under constant pressure from our administrators to ban eating of any kind in the classroom. I enforce it selectively. You choose your batttles wisely.
Last week, the Principal started selling candy and bags of junk food snacks out of the office. There are signs up all over the school with a list of products and prices. I don't know if the money goes in her pocket or the school's, but that's irrelevant. The kids are getting a completely mixed message, and so are the teachers.
So lets recap: we still have no IEP's (Individualized Education Plans) for the kids. I'm guessing that well over 50 percent of them have learning disabilities. But we have no access to that information, which would include suggestions for accomodating those learning disabilities into our classroom routines. We've got kids that probably need to be in some other settings, who are hugely disruptive. And now we've got the administrator selling sugary snacks so that they'll be even better behaved.
6 comments:
Could the M&M's actually be Ritalin?
Sigh. Your principal sounds like an idiot. He/she is not thinking about what's best for the children. Bad administrator! Bad!
I am so sad about your IEPs not having them really sucks. You don't know how to best work with the students. I always thought it was really stpid to sell students things they aren't supposed to have, and unhealthy ones on top of it.
I guess if they do this sort of thing once a year, it's not that bad, but you know it's not going to be kept to that. Might as well be selling them cigarettes while they're at it.
Hmmm, and we wonder why there is a recent upswing of thefts at school. Maybe to off-set the cost of their sugar habit.
I don't have kids but I was absolutely flabbergasted by a story my friend told me. Her 9 year old kid (who is more than a little overweight) came home from school one day and said he needed more lunch credits. Quickly doing the math, she figured he should still have more credits on his card. After doing some investigating, she found out that he was buying those snoballs, ding-dongs and twinkies every day in addition to his lunch. I said, "WHAT?! He's nine years old! He shouldn't be allowed to make those decisions." Since when do elementart schools have these things for sale? I've heard the commotion about having pop machines in high schools before, but having sweets like this for sale to such a young kid just floored me. No wonder we are the fattest country in the world.
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