Food For Thought: Breakfast and Student Success

I'm an anomaly. I couldn't even tell you the last time I missed breakfast. Sure, at 5'11" and 200 lbs, you can say that I haven't missed many meals lately. However, there is an important educational circumstance that I was placed in to learn just how important breakfast was to student success - and one that's still so neglected.

The impact for me went all the way back to elementary school. I can still remember our wrestling coach give us a lecture on the importance of breakfast. This is to a bunch of kids who've just started to learn how to cut weight to gain an advantage over their 8-year-old counterpart. And part of that had to deal with cutting out the calories at breakfast.

But thankfully that coach took us out to his car. He put us in a cluster and drove his car around the parking lot for a few laps. We all sat there wondering what the heck was going on. Coach, what are you doing here? and Coach, do you need us to call 911? passed through all the synapses of our brains and, in some cases, out through our lips. Though he drove with the window down (and drove slowly enough to have a conversation with us, if he wanted), he ignored us. That is, until the car went kaput. It had run out of gas.

At that moment, he leapt out of the car and made the quick analogy - that this is what we were doing to our bodies and our brains when we skipped breakfast.  We wouldn't run a car on empty, so why would we do the same to ourselves? That might be the last time I missed breakfast. I never wanted to run on empty.

Now think about how many students sat in your classrooms today and were running on fumes. Here are a few resources to use (and the case to make) breakfast consumption a quick classroom discussion:

1. Nearly 15% of students and almost ⅓ of teenagers skip breakfast!
2. CNN reported that students who eat breakfast perform upwards of 20% better on assessments
3. While it's better that students have something in their stomachs than nothing at all, we need to steer them away from their favorite cereal-induced sugar spikes. NPR reports that not all breakfast foods are equal. Top dogs are eggs, fruit, toast, and - gasp - vegetables!
4. While many schools offer breakfast to their students (especially their most vulnerable ones), less than ½ of those students eat breakfast, even when it's free or reduced. Why? Time crunch! In my school, students are given 10 minutes to get their books at their lockers, get in line for breakfast, and eat, dispose of their trash, and then get to homeroom. In other cases, it's not socially acceptable. It's much cooler to starve.
5. Help students control their weight by having them eat regularly.
6. Though the science is just in the experimental stages, research is beginning to find correlations to student breakfast consumption and improved behavior.
7. Use this handy infographic to distribute to your students, thanks to the No Kid Hungry Campaign.
8. Or, for the Parks and Recreation fans out there (it's going to be a cult classic, you wait), share a Ron Swanson Poster.

I'm an anomaly. But at least I'm an anomaly running on a full tank of gas every morning.