I need to vent! Sorry, this is a long one.
Okay, here's the deal. My school started a new initiative last year. Breakfast in the Classroom. This initiative also coincided with free breakfast and lunch for ALL children. It's a great initiative, but one with many frustrations. One is that the dietary restrictions are such that some of the meals/breakfasts are unappetizing. I've tried the breakfasts...some are lacking and many of the kids avoid these meals.
Anyway, an example of a typical breakfast today was a whole wheat sausage biscuit, milk, and a pear. Most often, like today, if a fresh fruit is offered, the kids refuse it. Sometimes the milk is denied, too. The kids are required to take all components of the meal, but they can place unwanted items on a share table. This way, a child that wants two servings of part of the breakfast, they can take it off of the share table.
Sounds good so far right? Now for my BIGGEST problem with this program. Anything left on the share table has to be THROWN AWAY! SERIOUSLY! TRASHED! I tearfully throw out up to 20-30 pints of milk and countless pounds of whole fresh fruit a week. It breaks my heart!
At one point, I saved the milk and fruit for snacks later in the day, and this was successful in salvaging a lot of the leftovers, but then we were told we could not do this! REALLY?!?!? I tried saving it up for my Food Pantry, but collecting and storing from week to week was impossible.
Finally, I now try to bring home the best of the fruit, which is the greatest loss, in my opinion. We try to eat up as much as we can. This finally brings me to my current problem. Today the kids were served beautiful Red d'Anjou Pears! They are so different from apples, oranges, and grapes the kids are used to, there were 18-20 pears left on the share table. So what would you do with them?
Okay, here's the deal. My school started a new initiative last year. Breakfast in the Classroom. This initiative also coincided with free breakfast and lunch for ALL children. It's a great initiative, but one with many frustrations. One is that the dietary restrictions are such that some of the meals/breakfasts are unappetizing. I've tried the breakfasts...some are lacking and many of the kids avoid these meals.
Anyway, an example of a typical breakfast today was a whole wheat sausage biscuit, milk, and a pear. Most often, like today, if a fresh fruit is offered, the kids refuse it. Sometimes the milk is denied, too. The kids are required to take all components of the meal, but they can place unwanted items on a share table. This way, a child that wants two servings of part of the breakfast, they can take it off of the share table.
Sounds good so far right? Now for my BIGGEST problem with this program. Anything left on the share table has to be THROWN AWAY! SERIOUSLY! TRASHED! I tearfully throw out up to 20-30 pints of milk and countless pounds of whole fresh fruit a week. It breaks my heart!
At one point, I saved the milk and fruit for snacks later in the day, and this was successful in salvaging a lot of the leftovers, but then we were told we could not do this! REALLY?!?!? I tried saving it up for my Food Pantry, but collecting and storing from week to week was impossible.
Finally, I now try to bring home the best of the fruit, which is the greatest loss, in my opinion. We try to eat up as much as we can. This finally brings me to my current problem. Today the kids were served beautiful Red d'Anjou Pears! They are so different from apples, oranges, and grapes the kids are used to, there were 18-20 pears left on the share table. So what would you do with them?
Daphne
Keep your mind wide open.
Keep your mind wide open.