Thank You Amanda!

This summer at Lettuce Link we're lucky to have a stellar intern crew. Today, we're featuring the writing of Victoria, who left her home in Texas to spend the summer in Seattle with Lettuce Link as a DukeEngage intern. 

It’s hard to imagine a job that involves monitoring school recess, teaching children how to cook, leading volunteers, and organizing a chicken cooperative. But Lettuce Link AmeriCorps member Amanda Horvath had that job and did it all.

After graduating from the University of Portland in 2012 with degrees in Spanish and Environmental Ethics and Policy, Horvath applied to work at Lettuce Link through Solid Ground’s Apple Corps AmeriCorps program, which requires 1700 hours of service in ten and a half months.

“I had spent my last couple of years working at our school’s organic garden and studying our food system and food policy,” Horvath said. “This position was a perfect mesh of being able to get my hands dirty and learning about what it takes to grow food.”

Horvath started work on September 1, 2012. During the fall, she worked in the Lettuce Link office at Solid Ground, performed outreach cooking demos at the Providence Regina House food bank in South Park, and worked at Marra Farm.

“When I started on the farm,” Horvath said, “I shadowed Sue to learn about how she led workparties and then slowly transitioned into leading workparties around the farm and doing more hands-on work.”

During the winter, Horvath increased her time in the office in order to organize a tour for the American Community Gardening Association Conference in August, and organized a chicken cooperative project for the South Park community.

“I had never run a project before and was really grateful [Lettuce Link Program Manager] Michelle let me do it,” Horvath said. “I learned that working with people is very challenging. I have a new appreciation for those who have the ability to work with people who have different interests, different ideas, and different ways of working and then bringing them together around a common goal.”

In addition to working in the office, Horvath spent Thursday afternoons at Concord International Elementary School, helping support the school’s move to schedule lunch after recess.

“I helped with the transition,” Horvath said, “by going to the playground, oftentimes monitoring behavior, and hanging out with the kids in the lunchroom. I also realized that the kids did not have sufficient time to eat lunch. They were given twenty minutes, but getting through the lunch line would sometimes take ten minutes. I started recording how many kids had not finished eating at the end of lunch and wrote a report for the staff. At the last staff meeting of the school year, they were unsure about continuing to scheduling lunch after recess, but committed to working on the issue of kids not having enough time to eat.”

When Lettuce Link’s garden classes started in the spring, Horvath co-taught fifth graders during the school day from Concord with Lettuce Link Education Coordinator Amelia Swinton and taught an afterschool class that incorporated cooking, nutrition, and gardening.

“My favorite role was working with the kids,” Horvath said. “I enjoyed the outdoor setting—getting to be a teacher but not necessarily being inside a classroom. It’s fun to see the kids be so excited about being in the garden. I definitely want to work with kids in the future. I’ll either get a degree in teaching or a master’s in public health that will be related to working with kids or working on childhood obesity or other child development issues.”

Horvath finished her AmeriCorps term on July 14, 2013.

“The biggest challenge,” Horvath said, “was grappling with the idea that I was doing a lot of community outreach and being involved with the community while knowing that I was leaving in ten and a half months. It’s such a short time period to build a relationship with the community and then just leave. It’s a really hard transition. This is something I’ve thought about a lot throughout my life, and I’m still struggling to figure out why I keep choosing to put myself in positions where I am involved for a short period and then leave. But through AmeriCorps I found my dream job I could do for a full year, and I loved it.”

Lunchroom Capacity Issues (Recess Before Lunch Part 3)

Our Apple Corps member, Mandy, has been reflecting on Concord's Recess Before Lunch program and how to encourage physical activity during the school day. See also Part 1 and Part 2 of her reflections.

Having recess before lunch seems simple, right?

Wrong.

Although the idea is not terribly complex, it produces all sorts of challenges. Scheduling conflicts, supervision issues, challenges with flow into and out of the lunchroom, and enough time for hand washing are just a few of the concerns schools have about making the switch (see this 2006 Journal of Child Nutrition and Management article for details).

At Concord, switching to Recess Before Lunch drastically highlighted the problem that students do not have enough time to eat lunch. Before the switch, students who spent most of the lunch period waiting in the lunch line lost out on recess time. After the switch to Recess Before Lunch, students had recess, but weren't done eating when it was time to get back to class.

Below is data from Concord from 2004-2011. As you can see from the graph, at Concord during the 15-minute lunch period, seat time has diminished by over 2 minutes since 2004. This is primarily due to increased student enrollment at the school.

Line transit time is the number of minutes students spend waiting in line to receive their lunch
Seat time is the number of minutes the last student to go through the lunch line has to sit and eat lunch 

For the 2012-2013 school year, Concord added 5 additional minutes to the lunch period (now 20 minutes) , implemented Recess Before Lunch, and put a salad bar in the lunch line.

However, even with these changes, it’s still a challenge to have enough time to eat.

• Average seat time for kindergarteners and 1st graders: 5 minutes 
• Average seat time for 2nd and 3rd graders: 6 minutes 
• Average seat time for 4th and 5th graders: 8 minutes 

The last students through the lunch line may only have 3 minutes of seat time. During this time, they need to not only eat their lunches, but clear their trays and clean their tables. This is a far cry from the Seattle Public Schools-recommended 20 minutes of seat time.

Out of curiosity, I took a survey of how many students were still eating at the end of lunch. 

Blue represents students finished eating at the end of lunch, red represents those not finished.

As you can see, even though older students eat faster, even not all of them are done eating at the end of the lunch period. Almost a quarter of kindergarten and first grade students were still eating five minutes after the end of the lunch period.

Among Concord staff, there is a consensus that something needs to change to ensure that students have more time to eat. However, figuring out what that “something” is remains the challenge.

However, the staff at Concord are on the right track. They are talking about "how much time is enough time to eat" and how to ensure that their students not only get a healthy lunch, but get enough time to eat it.

Regardless of whether or not Recess Before Lunch stays at Concord, a newly-formed staff work group will continue to work on the issues that the switch made apparent.

How Much Time Is Enough for Lunch? (Recess Before Lunch Part 2)

Our Apple Corps member, Mandy, has been reflecting on Concord's Recess Before Lunch program and how to encourage physical activity during the school day. Read Part 1 of her reflections here. 

In my time at Concord International Elementary this school year, I've realized that it’s not just an issue of Recess Before Lunch (RBL) or Lunch Before Recess. Rather, it’s a question of whether students even have enough time to eat their lunch. This is an issue not just at Concord, but at many Seattle Public Schools and likely schools throughout the country.

Students don’t have enough time to eat their lunch. From what I've heard, even when the students ate lunch before recess at Concord, they still rushed through their meals to get outside for recess and didn't spend much time eating.

Concord has a large number of students receiving free and reduced lunch. Unlike other schools where many students bring their lunches from home, the majority of the students at Concord have to get through the lunch line to receive their food. So, part of the problem is an issue of capacity.

Seattle School District Nutrition Services recommends, based on national standards, that students have 20 minutes to sit down and eat lunch. However, this is only a recommendation; schools are not required to budget that much of time.

If they are at the end of the lunch line, Concord students sometimes have only three to five minutes to sit down and eat lunch after waiting in line. This isn't because lunchroom staff members aren't doing their jobs – they manage to get a very large number of students in from the playground and through the lunch line in record time. However, there are too many students to serve in too short a time period.

I believe that even if Concord switches back to a recess after lunch model, the challenge of allocating enough time to eat will remain. Dr. Zavala, the principal at Concord, as well as faculty and staff, agree on this point and they have created a "lunch team" to address the issue.

It’s important to realize that Concord is not the exception. Many, if not most, schools face similar challenges and likely the majority of students throughout the Seattle School District (and beyond) do not have enough time to eat lunch.

If we want to encourage our students to exercise and eat healthy foods, we must have a school schedule that allows them to do so. Forcing students to sacrifice the social aspects of eating together and encouraging them to gorge on their lunch doesn't promote the healthy eating habits we want to develop.

So perhaps, rather than questioning the efficacy of Recess Before Lunch, schools and school districts should begin by questioning whether or not students have enough time to eat at school. Although it may prove to be challenging, allotting students enough time to eat is a great start to helping them develop positive eating habits.

Read Part 3 of her reflections here.

Recess Before Lunch? (Part 1)

Over the last five months, I've been spending one day a week during recess and lunch at Concord International Elementary in South Park. I may be a so-called adult, but that hasn't stopped me from joining in on games of basketball, tetherball, or four-square. It hasn't prevented me from twirling ropes for double Dutch or jumping ropes in games of snake and helicopter. I may be too tall for the monkey bars now, but if I wasn't I’d be swinging around like a monkey too. Interestingly enough, not much has changed on the playground since my days of being a recess goer. Maybe there are some new ‘special’ rules and songs, but a lot of the same games are still around.

Your typical playground still looks the same, but Concord International Elementary is shaking things up — in a good way. Last year staff voted to switch things around and in September, Concord entered into its trial Recess Before Lunch period that is still taking place. Staff will soon meet to determine whether or not to keep the schedule this way.

Recess Before Lunch (RBL) is a policy that reverses the longstanding tradition of eating lunch before heading out to recess. Just because we all grew up having recess after lunch, doesn't mean it’s necessarily better. (After all, I’m sure anyone reading this can think of at least one occasion where they felt sick from running too soon after eating.)

As this national phenomenon has begun to spread, more studies have shown that students return to class calmer and ready to learn, waste less food, visit the school nurse fewer times, and experience fewer discipline problems. The environment of the school cafeteria is more relaxed and students are better behaved. To learn more, check out what Montana schools and the Montana Team Nutrition Program has been up to or visit Peaceful Playgrounds.

Recess Before Lunch at Concord stemmed from the work of the Healthy Foods for South Park project, a Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant-funded collaboration between Lettuce Link, the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), Concord, and the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice. 

Through numerous school, PTA, and community meetings, including an event held by MOVE: Mapping our Voices for Equality, South Park community members and Concord parents, faculty, and staff committed themselves to keep working toward a healthier community and school. 

The resulting projects now include Solid Ground-sponsored nutrition education at Concord, a school-wide Healthy Celebrations policy, Recess Before Lunch, and organized recess activities that encourage physical activity (working with Treeswing to implement the Playworks Recess model).

This commitment hasn't been an easy process. Stay tuned to read about some of the unexpected challenges encountered in implementing Recess Before Lunch at Concord, and how the Concord community is addressing these barriers.

Read Part 2 of Mandy's reflections here.

~ Mandy, Apple Corps Member with Lettuce Link