Arin Blackwood

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My mom cried as a first year teacher when she realized many of her students were food insecure. She put a snack pantry in her class and has had one ever since.

My sister cried with anger as a first year teacher because of how few of her students grew up without being exposed to violence, poverty, and neglect.

My dad didn’t cry as a first year teacher, but was convinced he was the worst teacher ever for 4 years straight. (He wasn’t)

My aunt was exhausted for the first year because her students were convinced she’d only be at their school for one year and then move to a better paying school district like all of their other new teachers. She spent the entire time teaching, actively gaining trust, and calming anxieties.

Some of these things are not technically school related, but have an impact on students in the classroom. As new teachers, my relatives got varying levels of support. New teachers need better support.

3 quit at my old job because they didn’t feel like they were getting the pay or support that was appropriate for what they were doing in the classroom. All of the teachers I have encountered pay for many of their own supplies. Many take time before or after school to check up on students they feel are at risk.

There are teachers that have students live with them or end up fostering students. My mom fostered 2 students and had another 2 live with us.

What many teachers do on the job isn’t as supported as it could be. They aren’t paid like they should.

Did I mention that a lot of the first year teachers I have worked with qualify for SNAP benefits and/or WIC? 😦

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Re: Why Teachers Provide Snacks (at my work)

ALL of the teachers I work with at my school provide snacks to students.

We’re a Title I school. This means almost all of our students are food insecure. It’s unreasonable to expect food insecure families to provide their own snacks to school.

ALL of the teachers and many of our other staff members provide snacks for their classrooms or offices. Our counselor has snacks in her office. Our health room assistant has snacks in her office. Our principal has snacks in his office. Our vice principal has snacks in her office. The office professionals have small snacks available as well.

Our new teachers usually can’t afford to do this, so veteran teachers and support staff often chip in.

When students DON’T have access to snacks, they get tired. Our students can’t focus. Students get irritable. They’re feeling the effects of hunger and cannot focus on their work. We see escalated behaviors because kids are hungry.

Providing food not only prevents some problems from happening, but it’s The Right Thing To Do.

Many of our students’ Only Guaranteed Meals are at school. School meals are not designed to provide a child’s only source of nutrition. The caloric value of school lunches isn’t enough. So—Kids get snacks with lunch. Kids get multiple ‘breaks’ (which they think are ‘‘regular breaks’‘) for snacks.

Anyone who wants a small snack will get one.

We have a Friday Weekend Bag Program, but many families HATE THOSE. Those snack bags come from the Thurston County Food Bank. They only contain shelf stable food since many of our families don’t have a reliable way to cook things. Most of the families decline the bags because the Instant Noodles, Dry Granola Bars, and Vegetable Soup aren’t what they’d eat anyway.

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A lot of the kids DO want fruit/vegetables. (Downside is if they can’t store those at home). We have some kids who try to hoard milk. <—a problem since many kids don’t have access to reliable refrigeration at home! Our milk ‘‘collecting’‘ kids ALL don’t have reliable refrigeration since they’re in living situations that don’t have refrigerators or freezers.

We provide snacks for the kids because we need to.

My Personal Project this coming school year is connecting My School with local nonprofit Fairshare Food Share Resource. It’s a group of volunteers who harvest small amounts of fruit and vegetables and give them away. They’re for smaller home gardeners who aren’t up for sending items directly to our food bank system due to time/health issues/etc.

The Thurston County Food Bank is expanding our school garden this year. I’m hoping that the garden will eventually be a nice Community You Pick for our students and the surrounding neighborhood.

The last big ol’ update had links. I’ll add links to this because food insecurity TICKS ME OFF. It shouldn’t be a thing. We’re fighting food insecurity at my elementary school.

All of my coworkers and all of my now-retired relatives have paid for classroom snacks/pantries With Their Own Money.

Food insecurity is a big issue in the United States.
When our kids aren’t eating enough they are tired, can’t focus, and are irritable. It’s difficult to get work done when you’re feeling the effects of hunger.

I’ll post excerpts of some articles below.

Feeding the need: Expanding school lunch programs

“Schools have always been the front line in the battle against
childhood hunger. It started with the National School Lunch Act, signed
by President Truman in 1946, which gave federal money to states to fund
school lunches.

Today more than 30 million kids benefit. And yet,
by some estimates at least one in six still doesn’t know where the next
meal is coming from.

“School
lunch is no longer this Brady Bunch convenience; it is a soup kitchen,”
said Jennifer Ramo, of the New Mexico anti-poverty group Appleseed.

“It
is a place where kids who haven’t eaten at night or haven’t eaten that
weekend, go to get basic nutrition so they can function. I think
we just have no idea how big the problem is and how many children are
suffering. And the best thing to do is just must make sure they’re fed.”

Growing Hunger in Schools is a Growing Problem (2012)

“What do parents tell their kids on the first day of school – stay
out of trouble, do your homework, and listen to your teachers,” Nelson
said.

“That’s our message today: listen to your teachers. What are they
telling us? Hunger needs to be a national priority.”

One in five children struggle with hunger nationwide and six out of
ten teachers report students regularly coming to school hungry. According to 80 percent of those teachers, the problem is only getting worse.

Educators realize the toll hunger takes on students. Nine in ten
teachers consider breakfast to be “extremely important” to academic
achievement. Fifty-three percent of teachers spend an average $26 of
their own money each month providing snacks for their students.”

Reading, writing and hunger: More than 13 million kids in this country go to school hungry

“There
is tremendous stigma of children going into a cafeteria before the
bell,” said McAuliffe, “whereas with the alternative breakfast model, it
normalizes it, creates community in the classroom around a meal, and
starts the day off strong.”

Underscoring the crucial impact a
healthy breakfast can have, a 2013 study done by Deloitte for No Kid
Hungry found that kids who have regular access to breakfast score 17.5
percent higher on standardized math tests

.Breakfast and lunch
programs in schools are making great strides in attacking childhood
hunger, but a huge gap remains. According to No Kid Hungry, a quarter of
all low-income parents worry their kids don’t have enough to eat
between school lunch and breakfast the next day; and three out of four
public school teachers say students regularly come to school hungry.

Increasingly, advocates are focusing on programs that ensure kids have
enough to eat when they are not in school, and after school and summer
meal programs are on the rise.”

Yep. My school is poor enough that it has all the kids on free breakfast and lunch, and nearly every teacher has a box of protein bars or fruit snacks or something to give to hungry kids in their classroom. We all buy them with our own money. How fucked are we as a society that this is pretty much normal at all the poorer schools?

A lot of our school funding is through property taxes. Low income areas have lower taxes which means lower funding for their neighborhood schools. It sucks.

Schools in high poverty areas are Title I schools. Almost every school in my district is Title I.

ALL public schools should be properly funded and NO ONE should be food insecure. (my 2 cents)

Further reading for anyone interested:

Why America’s Schools Have A Money Problem

Is It Time to Stop Funding Schools With Local Property Taxes?

School Funding Inequality Makes Education ‘Separate And Unequal,’ Arne Duncan Says

Schools with greater than 40% of families considered low-income are qualified to apply funding to school-wide programming

Federal Title I Funding for Students who Struggle with Literacy

Title I: Rich School Districts Get Millions Meant for Poor Kids

Then there’s schools that are literally falling apart:

I work at one of America’s underfunded schools. It’s falling apart

It’s Not Just Freezing Classrooms in Baltimore. America’s Schools Are Physically Falling Apart

Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions

Leaking sewage, splintering walls: Parents complain Wake County school is falling apart

Without State Support, Michigan’s Schools Will Continue to Crumble

We’re dealing with students and families that are food insecure:

KIDS IN AMERICA ARE HUNGRY

Food for Thought: How Food Insecurity Affects a Child’s Education

Schools becoming the ‘last frontier’ for hungry kids

And guys, you know… It doesn’t have to be like this. Teachers like me who teach in other countries know this and are always so shocked when we read about and see what the US, supposedly a leading and not a developing country, is like in education

I always keep our extra snacks from our programs (usually the ones I did not eat or that other children did not open) just in case. I will never forget the four year old girl my third year in this program who would sneak food or her older siblings in third and fifth grade so they also had something to eat, since they gave so much of their portions to her and her little sister.