Here at Beyond Breakfast, we love it when schools “put on their thinking caps” to come up with creative solutions for feeding students. When we read great stories about the creative ways schools across the country are implementing school breakfast and lunch programs, we just have to share them with you!
Special Breakfast Offers Etiquette Lessons for Students
In Connecticut, New Britain High School used a special breakfast to teach students important lessons about etiquette. Forty ninth-graders were treated to breakfast at Whinstone Tavern at Stanley Golf Course and school staff used the opportunity to provide etiquette lessons to at-risk youth as part of the Graduation Odyssey program. This was a terrific opportunity to tie-in the most important meal of the day with important lessons on social skills for these young adults. Congratulations to New Britain Consolidated School District, where seven elementary and two middle schools are currently serving Universal Breakfast! You can find the Consolidated School District of New Britain on Facebook
.Breakfast Mentoring Program
At Kaler Elementary School in South Portland, Maine, universal breakfast-in-the-classroom is paired with a mentoring program, designed to help K-5 students develop relationships with teachers and other adults. The initiative is part of an overall institutional effort to address low-attendance, improve progress for meeting state standards, and feed hungry students. “In addition to the daily meals, an entire grade will have a sit-down, home-cooked, family-style meal in the cafeteria once a month.” Congratulations to Kaler Elementary School, for using breakfast-in-the-classroom, and school meals in general, to address the needs of the whole child!
Breakfast Reward for Kindness in “Breakfast of Champions” Initiative
While we love to see universal breakfast-in-the-classroom implemented as its own reward, we can’t help but love the message of “Breakfast of Champions,” a program implemented at the Columbia Elementary School in Brooklyn, Michigan. Each month students are selected by teachers and rewarded for “random acts of kindness” with a special breakfast (“Breakfast of Champions”) with school principal Deb Powell. Using breakfast as an opportunity to reinforce lessons about good character? We love it!
‘Second Chance’ Breakfast Serves Students Who Miss Morning Meal
It’s a school breakfast we have heard before here at Beyond Breakfast—what about kids who miss the early meal, served in the school cafeteria? Havelock Middle School has implemented an intermediary “Second Chance” breakfast program, served between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m., for students who miss the 7 a.m. cafeteria meal; the school received a $1500 No Kid Hungry/Share Our Strength North Carolina state grant, intended to increase breakfast participation in schools.