Parentella

Jamie Oliver and my revolutionary moment

My 5th grade daughter shared her low from her school day: there had been no white (i.e. regular) milk for breakfast or lunch that day.

I pack the girls’ lunches Monday through Thursday, but on Fridays, they eat at school. I just got lucky that my daughter doesn’t like flavored milk; she prefers the original. She said she tried to drink one of the flavored milks just to have something to drink with her food, but she hated it.

“That’s not right,” I said. I emailed the school district. My email was sent to the appropriate people who assured me that they will work with the school so that this doesn’t happen again, and to please apologize to my daughter on their behalf.

They said that hearing from families helps them provide a better service, and they appreciated that we took the time to let them know.

Ironically enough, I read that email just before watching the season opener of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. One of his “stunts” that episode was showing how much sugar goes into flavored milk. My daughter was proud that she didn’t want to drink that, and we were both happy that we’d done what we could to make a difference in our own school.

Okay, so it’s not abolishing standardized tests or even re-thinking reading homework. Still, it was important to both me and my daughter. She beamed when I read her the email from the food service coordinator.

And I think it is those small moments of victory, those small interactions that (hopefully) produce results that help us all to realize that a real revolution can happen.

It starts with milk. Or getting a homework assignment revised. Any interaction that gets us looking at each other not as parent versus school administration, but as people with a mutual interest in our children’s education. From there, we can build to thinking of each other as partners.

Revolution may be too strong a word for the milk email exchange, but it’s a step closer.

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By April McCaffery

Related posts:

1. And on Top of Everything Else, There’s Lunch
2. Eye of the Beholder: Project-Based Learning Perspectives
3. Making Homework More Effective
4. Re-thinking Parental Involvement
5. Preparing yourself as a parent for Back to School

Tags: April McCaffery, Food, healthy recipes, Jamie Oliver, Parent involvement, Recipes, school lunches

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under April McCaffery, Education Reform, Food, Parent Perspectives, Parent teacher communication, School Involvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.