School Lunch - Pennsylvania

Al Bullock's career took him to widely diverse schools and neighborhoods. In each assignment, common sense, compassion, and plenty of good food played a major part in the success he brought about. Mr. Bullock described some of the experiences he had working in various schools in Pennsylvania.

One was North Brandywine, a "country club" school site, located on a one hundred acre campus, with many of the district's best and most experienced teachers and a "presumption for success" attitude of students and staff who behaved and learned creatively by their own rules, with fewer dogmatic constraints than at other schools where Bullock served.

He writes, "My previous assignment in the district had been as a teacher in a special education satellite school facility that separated my kids from the `normal kids' (as was customary at that time), then in a low-income Title One (educationally/economically disadvantaged) elementary school, followed by a principalship in an equally disadvantaged inner-city building whose walls were literally falling down.

"The offering of food was at the center of nearly all of the important episodes that marked my career as an educator for thirty-one years in a small Pennsylvania public school district."

- Al Bullock

"Growing up as a `poor boy from North Philly,' I understood that food was a medium of exchange in my neighborhood - we never visited neighbors or family without bringing along a food item - and I learned that if you wanted children and their parents to have involvement with the school, you needed to have food available as the `lure' for the learning agenda.

"In my first assignment at a disadvantaged school, having fruit cooling in a nearby stream was the incentive for kids to show up. They knew that later in the day cold oranges or a watermelon feed would be the reward for their day's work. In the Title One school, my second assignment, the principal would come in early to cook breakfast for her staff each day. Sometimes she was assisted by the kids whose parents had not yet returned from the midnight shift at the steel mill in time to feed them breakfast.

"My third assignment (and first principalship) featured parents and kids together using the school kitchen facilities after hours to make the best nut rolls around. They were sold in the local neighborhoods to raise funds for field trips and other special events. In each instance, food drew the attention and participation of those who would not otherwise have been involved.

"In 1989 I was reassigned to the Gordon Middle School, a landlocked junior high that occupied a full city block in a deteriorated city setting. Gordon was overlooked by a massive federal housing project and distinguished by the reputation for being the lowest-achieving middle school in the county. Teachers considered it a `punishment assignment' in this `throwaway' school, but the Gordon staff had some of the most talented teachers in the district buried in its ranks, camouflaged in a `go nowhere' atmosphere. To this boy from North Philly, I was home! Knowing that the most dramatic improvement can shine in the most desperate circumstances, segments of my staff and I set about to change things.

"One aspect of creating a new Gordon was accepting the premise that a hungry student body was not fueled to achieve. Food had been the medium to reach other objectives in other schools, and it represents a non-threatening source for talking and linking with others. With this in mind, I began making trips to the housing project, bringing coffee and rolls with me, to meet parents and grandparents. We talked about packing snacks for kids to eat in class at school. They agreed to send in the fruits, veggies and pretzels needed to get the kids from our 7:45 am start, till lunchtime, ready to deal with their heavy math, science, and language courses scheduled in extended time blocks.

"Kids were pleased that it was OK to eat in class when they got hungry, and that having food at school outside the cafeteria was no longer forbidden. When students and teachers jointly approved the kinds of food to be eaten, candy and gum virtually disappeared.

"As an extension of the `snack' idea, home ec teachers, supported by the nurse and phys ed teachers, decided to offer snacks to students during breaks when they were taking mandatory state tests - the very tests that ranked the student body at the bottom of the scoring range. Weeks of preparation and encouragement included the idea that students were going to be `fueled for success.' They were served by their teachers and me with fruit juice and high energy snacks prepared in our home ed kitchens as material evidence that their test performance held the same value as scoring a touchdown, making that game-winning goal, or coming out on top in a championship game. How many times have students had so many adults giving each of them individual attention to achieve, and demonstrating that their individual test performance collectively mattered?

"Six weeks later when the test results arrived from the state scoring center, the results were staggering. Not only had our Gordon kids scored at the top among our three district junior highs, but placed second among junior highs in the county and ranked among the top ten percent in the state. A new attitude for success was born in this impoverished inner-city middle school that was repeated for the next three years. The school drew accolades from our Pennsylvania Department of Education and from the U.S. Department of Education, naming Gordon a Blue Ribbon School - one of the best 200 secondary schools in the U.S. during 1992-93.