Students turn fast food into fuel for learning

In a Wellstone Elementary classroom, the five minutes before class have become the quietest part of the school day.

You can't blame the students for not talking. They're busy eating.

A growing school-breakfast program in St. Paul, called Breakfast to Go, allows these students to grab a free nutritious meal in the cafeteria and take it to class. This "fast food" ensures more children are eating their morning meal and can cut down on tardiness and other barriers to their education.

"There were people that had concerns about food in the classroom. But now they've seen the benefit of it and are very supportive of it," said Christine Osorio, principal of St. Paul's Paul and Sheila Wellstone Elementary, the site for the district's pilot program last year.

"Teachers really like having the kids up in class and getting started," Osorio said. "It's built community in classrooms. It's given us a much more relaxed start to our day."

As third-grade teacher Ann Raimann recently took attendance and prepared for the day, 9-year-old Mohamedameen Mohamud did his morning grammar work while eating cheese bread and drinking apple juice. He likes Breakfast to Go better than the school's previous breakfast program in which students ate downstairs and then rushed up the school's eight floors to get to class.

"Now it's better because we get to eat before we learn," Mohamedameen said.

Eating early is important, said Susan Tallarico, the school's nutrition services supervisor. She sets up the breakfast lines for 600 people every school day. Many studies have suggested that skipping breakfast decreases children's cognitive abilities and that children score lower on cognitive tests when they miss breakfast.

Moreover, after the classroom breakfast program began, tardiness dropped by 8 percent and office referrals for discipline decreased 20 percent.

In 2006, the Congressional Hunger Center gave a California school district a Victory Against Hunger award for its program called "Grab n Go," where students picked up a premade bagged breakfast and ate it in class. In 2009, one in six U.S. school districts allowed breakfast in the classroom, up from one in 10 in 2007, according to St. Paul schools.

Breakfast to Go has tweaked that. Students at Wellstone arrive 15 minutes before class, grab their own biodegradable plastic bag and jump into cafeteria lines to pick from various entrees - such as the students' favorite, cheese bread - along with juice and other items. The packaging reduces the mess, and after all of the food is eaten in the classrooms, students take turns volunteering to clean up, making for a swift transition into the school day.

"One thing we knew for certain: Nobody would want it if those kids couldn't get cheese bread," said Linda Dieleman, senior manager for nutrition and commercial services for the district.

So far, 12 schools in the St. Paul district run Breakfast to Go programs, and the percentage of students eating breakfast has gone from 39 percent to 64 percent.

The goal is to expand the program to 25 of the 63 district locations this school year.

Although the program is not a magic bullet that solves all of the district's problems, Dieleman is proud that 10,000 more students are eating breakfast in the district this year.

"Some of these students have never been through full breakfast before," she said. "Breakfast to Go is probably the only way we could meet the needs of the students."

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Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, http://www.twincities.com

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