Dear colleagues,
There seems to be a need to have a conversation about the healthy and balanced lunch particularly in Grades 1 -5 classrooms. Furthermore, it is important that we all take an action to support students with their lunch choices. We all know how nutrition has an impact on student alertness, ability to stay focused and stamina. Parents and faculty are noticing a trend of poor choices arising during lunch time including rice-only-meals, no-salad-meals, overuse of desserts, additional purchases of cookies, salty nori, sugary drinks etc. The direct consequence is that student learning is negatively influenced.
Please, address this in the classrooms as soon as possible by designing learning experiences focusing on the importance of healthy and balanced nutrition. To apply the learning, we need to provide a step-by-step scaffolding and guidance on how to make it happen. Please, discuss with your grade level partner as well as vertically what steps you would like to take. Thank you for your flexibility and cooperation in this important matter.
Our current recommendations include the following:
Packed lunch:
Students are expected to bring a balanced and healthy lunch from home. Furthermore, please encourage students to have a discussions at home with their parents about the different healthy packed lunch to ensure that students will actually eat their lunch at school. During lunch time, students with packed lunch are not allowed to purchase cookies, sugary drinks or other sugary items. Fruit can be purchased as an addition to the packed lunch.
Hot lunch:
Students are expected to choose a balanced combination of carbs, meat/vegetarian option, salad and dessert as informed in the menu. During lunch time, students are not allowed to purchase cookies, sugary drinks or other sugary items. Additional fruit can be purchased after the students have finished their lunch.
Supervision
The kitchen staff is monitoring and reminding the students about their choices at lunch time. Additionally, we will establish the cafeteria line supervision duty for the next few weeks; four weeks before Christmas and two weeks after. The duty is for 10 minutes and this time, the focus is on guiding students making healthy choices in the cafeteria. We will start on Tuesday, and the duty rota can be found here.
Addressing the healthy lunch matter at the whole school level
Finally, Jon will be working with the Cezars Kitchen, some faculty members and a group of parents to ensure that our students continue to have access to, and utilize the healthy and balanced lunch every day.
ES Leadership Team Communication
