Letter about teachers bearing witness to hunger in the classroom

Over the last few weeks, through a new initiative called “Hunger in America’s Classrooms: Share Our Strength’s Teacher Report” we have been asking teachers to describe the impact that hunger has on their students and their efforts to teach. Here is a small sample of what we heard:

Lisa in Saegertown told us: “You do not need to ask which child is hungry, because you can see it in their eyes and their actions. They are less attentive in school and this shows in their grades and test scores. They are tired and worry a lot about getting something to eat.”

Jamie, a second grade teacher in Denver explained: “Kids being hungry is affecting their way of learning. It’s very difficult for teachers because when a child is hungry and just thinking about when they are going to get the next meal, they can’t focus on learning. It’s the hierarchy of needs, you know. They can’t work on learning how to read and add and subtract if they are worrying about food.”

Melissa, an elementary school teacher in NY, told us: “What I would want America to do is look in the teacher’s closet at any tiny school, and when you see the amount of food they supply, on a teacher’s budget, you’ll see that there are hungry kids in this country.”

Finally, Jessica, who teaches a bilingual Spanish class in California, said: “It breaks my heart, you know, because they are hungry…. We sent something home to parents about healthy kids. I was shocked, or really I was more disappointed, by how many surveys came back saying the kids never or rarely ate breakfast. It’s a low-income-barely-scrape-by community. A very significant proportion of these families’ income goes just to keeping the lights on. The families have to make tough decisions. Do we pay the rent or do we eat as much as we’d like until we feel full? For a lot of parents, the expendable is food.”

A nation that can find billions of dollars to rescue investment banks and car companies and to fund economic stimulus ought to be able to find the modest resources necessary to ensure that every child comes to school with enough food and nutrition to pay attention and learn.

The programs that accomplish that have long been in place and we know that they work. But we also know that millions of children face unnecessary obstacles to participation in such programs. For example, in Ohio only 10% of kids who are eligible participate in the summer feeding program. In many cases alternative meal sites have not been secured when the schools are closed. And only a fraction of school districts have made school breakfast universal to eliminate the stigma of being the poor kid who shows up early for breakfast.

Unless communities—governors, mayors, and local leaders—collaborate to develop plans that identify and eliminate these barriers, we are not just short-changing the kids, but we are short-changing the teachers we’ve invested in and entrusted to educate them, not to mention our own future.