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Thoughts from the Editors
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Advocating for Healthy Choice in
School Curricula and Food Programs
Peggy Albers, Caitlin McMunn Dooley, Amy Seely Flint,
Teri Holbrook, and Laura May
O
ver the past several decades, the impact
of healthy eating and lifestyles on longevity has come to the foreground of popular
interest. This interest has now filtered into schools;
activists, celebrity and local chefs, district nutritionists, educators, and others have become instrumental in shaping curriculum around the issue
of the food that children consume, and issues of
health that accompany it. From school lunches to
snack and beverage choices, from chef-to-school
programs to school gardens, educators across this
country are taking a critical stance toward the quality of food children eat. No longer is the topic of
food relegated solely to school district nutritionists and those working in school kitchens; food has
become central in school curricula, including the
language arts, and in this issue, it is our topic for
Language Arts.
According to the Centers for Disease Control
(2012), child obesity has more than tripled in the
past 30 years. The number of children between
the ages of 6 and 11 who were considered obese
increased from 7% in 1980 to 20% in 2008, and
one-third of those children in 2008 were overweight
or obese due to caloric imbalance associated with
environmental, behavioral, and/or genetic factors
(http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm).
Funded in part by The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) with its annual budget of $9.5 billion,
schools play a significant role in the healthy living
of children. The NSLP provides meals for over 31
million children and is required to follow the nutritional recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines
for Americans. However, according to Chandler
(2011), as of 2011, fewer than one-third of the
school lunches offered meet the required restriction
on saturated fat content.
A number of people have created programs
and developed curricula that focus on food choices,
fat content of school menus, and the promotion
of healthier dietary choices. Celebrity chef Jamie
Oliver’s campaigns, called “Feed Me Better” and
“Food Revolution,” were television series that followed Oliver as he attempted to make changes to
school lunch programs in Britain and in the US,
respectively, to help to fight obesity and change
children’s eating habits in order for them to live
healthier and longer lives. Ann Cooper, called the
“Renegade Lunch Lady,” moved from being a fine
dining chef to working with the lunch program
in Berkeley Unified School District to improve
school lunch programs. First Lady Michelle Obama
has initiated efforts to focus attention on healthful eating by planting and maintaining a garden at
the White House and developing “Let’s Move,” a
national organization devoted to eliminating child
obesity. Such efforts have snowballed into a number
of school projects that connect curricula in schools
to healthy eating and lifestyles.
One such program, Baltimore’s Great Kids
Farm, offers children hands-on experiences at this
working farm in areas of healthy eating, sustainable
agriculture, and the natural sciences (http://www
.baltimorecityschools.org/domain/5111). The Chefs
Move to Schools program (http://healthymeals.nal
.usda.gov/chefs-move-schools-2) invites chefs from
local restaurants to teach children about food preparation, help them build confidence about cooking, and encourage inquiry into food products and
choices with hands-on cooking experiences. The
Language Arts, Volume 90 Number 4, March 2013
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famed Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King
Middle School in Berkeley, California, founded 16
years ago by nationally known chef Alice Waters
(http://edibleschoolyard.org/our-story), features a
garden and a teaching kitchen. Over the years, these
initial adventures have developed into schoolwide
curricula that have children working to clear trees
and bushes for cisterns as they plant, maintain,
and harvest over 100 varieties of seasonal vegetables, herbs, vines, berries, flowers, and fruit trees.
National farm-to-school programs (http://www
.farmtoschool.org/) have sprung up, all with a mission to link nutrition in K–12 schools to curricula
by connecting them with local farms, which in turn
support local and regional farmers. Within the past
decade, more and more schools have connected
with local farmers, chefs, and nutritionists to make
significant changes in the quality of school lunches.
This themed issue of Language Arts, “Literate
Lunch,” provides insights into how educators have
designed and developed action projects within language arts curricula to improve the academic and
gastronomical welfare of children. Lynn Gatto’s
piece, “‘Lunch Is Gross’: Gaining Access to Powerful Literacies,” describes an ethnographic and
curricular investigation—and subsequent social
action—into the quality of one school’s lunch program. Across three years, students at this school
studied school lunches in the district, initiated (and
made political) efforts to make visible the unhealthy
lunches at their school, and lobbied to have better
and healthier school choices.
In “Growing Language Awareness in the Classroom Garden,” Patricia Paugh and Mary Moran collaboratively studied a third-grade community gardening and urban farming curriculum. Their goal
was to support an existing classroom culture that
valued students’ ownership of their learning and
their development of a sense of literacy as a social
practice for contributing to community and society,
while also finding pathways for explicit academic
language instruction. Will Summers’s narrative,
“Tomatoes, Cucumbers, and Salad Tag: A Farmer
Goes to School,” describes how he developed a
school farm and a K–8 curricula based upon food,
agriculture, and sustainability.
Our departments also highlight the significance
of curricula to support children’s knowledge of and
engagement with school gardens, lunches, the natural environment, and environmental issues, with the
purpose of promoting sustainable and healthy living. Our Research and Policy department addresses
the relationship of learning in school to food insecurity and nutrition and to dental health—windows
into the overall condition of children’s bodies and
wellness. Our Professional Books department
reviews three books that realistically and critically
consider the “greening” of literacy learning in classrooms, especially focusing on classroom strategies
that support teachers’ and students’ ability to affect
change. Our “Conversation Currents” features
Season 6 Top Chef finalist Kevin Gillespie, owner
and head chef of Gunshow, a restaurant in Atlanta,
Georgia, who relates the significance of food to a
language arts program, while also highlighting the
importance of food and family.
This issue’s Children’s Literature department is
authored by the 2012 Notable Children’s Books in
the Language Arts committee who read, evaluated,
and selected 30 books for grades K–8 that exemplify outstanding literature for use in language arts
classrooms. This collection highlights the many
and varied uses of language—to imagine new and
different experiences, to preserve and learn from
diverse cultural heritages, to question personal
thoughts and feelings, to take the perspective of
others, and to take action on behalf of issues and
people that matter to them.
We hope this issue will engage you in considering projects and resources for healthy, sustainable
living through the language arts.
References
Centers for Disease Control. (2012). Child obesity facts.
Retrieved on July 14, 2012, from http://www.cdc.gov/
healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm.
Chandler, S. (2011). Fat in school lunches. Retrieved
on July 14, 2012, from http://www.livestrong.com/
article/363662-fat-in-school-lunches/.
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