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African-American Teachers View Cafeteria as Another Classroom
Often playing the role of surrogate parents to their students, teachers find themselves with nine months each year to direct and shape impressionable minds, hopefully influencing their lifelong paths for the better. A teacher's influence spans beyond the classroom and into the cafeteria. In fact, one of the first lessons teachers can provide is proper nutrition.
While the three “R’s” (reading, writing and arithmetic) are the focus of many curriculums, students also look to their teachers for other knowledge where the final exam is life itself. Adopting the philosophy of “it takes a village to raise a child,” African-American educators, in particular, may find themselves in the role of caregiver, counselor and confidante to students who need the extra guidance.
Many public school districts are providing breakfast, lunch and even healthy snack programs to their students. Teachers have unique opportunities to introduce proper nutrition into their lesson plans. For examples, they can calculate calories and explain their relationship to pounds, read and define intimidating food labels, and even study food reactions such as the effect of simple sugars on metabolism. Teachers can use many methods to incorporate the lesson of nutrition into the core curriculum.
Why is incorporating nutrition so important? Many African-American rites and celebrations are centered around the feast of traditional African-American cuisine commonly referred to as “soul food.” Many of these traditional foods are high in fat and calories because of the popular preparation methods, including deep frying and barbecuing and the use of gravies and sauces.
While it’s inappropriate to ask any student to give up his or her cultural traditions, a science teacher might educate students about food labels and nutritional values without attempting to explicitly instruct whether certain meals are “good” or “bad." A social studies teacher might teach how economic limitations (and the lack of fresh foods in one’s diet) might affect proper nutrition and offer alternatives such as growing small home gardens, shopping at farmer’s markets and even participating in local food bank programs. In addition, as part of health education, teachers can focus on inexpensive methods of altering the nutritious value of foods by a modification of sodium, sugar and fat in a recipe and the substitution of herbs, fruits and vegetables as well as removing the skin and fat from meat and consuming smaller portions. Every lesson learned is an opportunity to fight the high rates of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity which are devastating the African-American community.
Last, but not least, teachers can set the example by allowing students to see them promote the importance of good nutrition. It’s important that teachers not only happily accept the apple their students offer, but allow the students to see them eat the apple as well.
