Kids who skip breakfast skip on learning and often find themselves in front of the principal or school nurse. Nutritionists have long held that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But can changing how and when school kids eat breakfast change their behavior in the classroom? One West Virginia middle school seems to think so.
As recently reported in the West Virginia Gazette, Elkins Middle School in Randolf County, West Virginia has adopted a new breakfast expansion program, which allows students to eat grab-and-go meals in the classroom. Breakfast is made available to all children because it’s served after the opening bell to ensure maximum participation. This simple change has reduced office referrals by 20 percent and suspensions by 15 percent. Students are showing up in class more often and the number of tardy students has dropped off.
Assistant Principal Angela Wilson credits these upbeat results to the school’s new breakfast program. "Nothing major was changed except for the way we do breakfast," said Wilson. "I absolutely believe it's the cause of the positive results we're seeing."
Serving breakfast later and outside the cafeteria has prompted more students to eat breakfast. Before the program, only 125 of the 700 students at Elkins ate breakfast. That number has jumped to nearly 500 students.
"Before this program, we kept seeing an increase in the number of kids who were not participating in class because they were sleepy and hungry, and it made them disruptive," said Wilson. "We have seen a significant decrease in discipline issues across the board since the program started."
Ronald E. Kleinman, M.D., chief of the pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School notes that breakfast, either at home or at school, is an important way to start the day. A number of studies suggest that kids who routinely skip breakfast don't optimize their nutrition during the day. What’s more, going without breakfast can lead to poor behavior. Kids who eat breakfast are more likely to be calmer, less anxious, more focused and learn better. Breakfast also tends to organize a child's day, particularly if they eat breakfast at school.
According to the School Nutrition Association, kids who eat breakfast at the start of their school day have higher math and reading scores, have broader vocabularies, and perform better on standardized tests. They’re also more focused, better behaved and less likely to be absent, overweight or be sent to the school nurse.
As a healthcare administrator, could an in-classroom breakfast program work in your school? According to the School Nutrition Association, the biggest challenge for implementing a grab-and-go breakfast or having it delivered to classrooms is securing the support of teachers and administrators. Most schools can make this work with little expense, just a shift in scheduling.
Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com
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