If you’ve been paying attention to US domestic news in recent months, you might have heard that as of November 1 of this year, SNAP (food stamp) benefits have been reduced.
It’s taken me a bit to process how this plays out in real life — and a bit longer to find the time to write a post about it. But I couldn’t ignore it.
I teach in a place where — depending on the year and depending on whether I am looking at numbers for my district or for my specific school — between 85% and 97% of our students receive free or reduced lunch. As far as I’ve experienced, free breakfast is a given. Needless to say, a significant portion of my student populace relies on SNAP benefits for eating at home.
At the beginning of last month, they had to rely on less.
I noticed differences within a few days.
First, an increase in the number of students saying they can’t concentrate in class because they’re hungry. (I know I just said that virtually every student qualifies for free breakfast at my school, there are sometimes other accessibility issues where students may still not choose to or get to eat school breakfast on any given day.)
Now, I’ve been teaching long enough that it’s not lost on me that: 1) some teenagers will use any excuse imaginable for not doing work; 2) November is That Point in our fall semester where excuse flailing peaks. However, typical excuse flailing is just that — kids latching onto any idea that strikes them in the moment, which usually results in a random assortment of reasons why they did not do their work. These hunger conversations have been more consistent and have included more students who do not normally participate in excuse flailing.
And, well — it’s possible for a student to be both a chronic excuse maker and distractingly hungry. In fact, I’d suggest that it’s even more important for students who are already borderline in their motivation and focus.
Wait, no. It’s important for everyone to have meaningful access to food. But depending on other life factors, being hungry or not can sometimes be the crucial element in adequate or inadequate academic performance.
Anyway, after I noticed the hunger talk, I then started to see more kids coming back with… extra… from lunch. It’s always been common for students to tuck their lunch apples or crackers or juice cups or maybe milks into their backpacks for later. (Side note to any students who may be reading: I heartily advise drinking the juice and milk now. Those foil lids and cardboard cartons are way more fragile than you think, and I am not really into grading your sticky homework.) But now it’s more like three milks, four juice cups, six pears. I’m not sure of their exact methods, but I do know that students are now doing more than just saving the leftovers from their own lunches. They are going out of their way, in one form or another, to get more food.
Also changed is the way they respond to seeing food in the classroom. (I realize that dis/allowing eating in the classroom is a contentious issue among high school teachers, but I’ve largely allowed it. I ask that they exercise good judgment about which foods are more classroom friendly and that they always clean up after themselves, and this works well.) At my school, there’s always been a climate of students sharing food, where this was just a Thing people offered to do — perhaps informed by the “bring enough for the whole class” adage regarding food in class. And this impulse still exists.
What’s changed, however, is the reaction — not in every situation, but as a general trend. Before, student reactions to food depended largely on the type of food it was. If it was something particularly novel or in demand, it would garner a certain amount of attention. (Yes, food distractions happen in my classroom. Yes, I’d rather have food distractions than hunger distractions.) If it wasn’t, takers-up on the offer to share would usually be limited. Now, on the other hand, there’s more likely to be increased interest in any kind of food brought into class. Not that students are clamoring over one another to get at saltines or whatever, but the difference is noticeable, if not strictly measurable.
And now? Winter break is here. Campus is closed for a little more than two weeks. Winter break comes mostly at the end of the month, far way from when a lot of families receive their SNAP benefits. The best I know to do is donate to school-organized holiday drives, where I know the proceeds will reach local families in need, and to my community food bank — which, a nearby grocery chain helps sponsor a “one can a week” program, and I like the continuity of that. But it doesn’t seem like enough in the face of so much increased food uncertainty.
By U.S. Department of Agriculture (20111025-FNS-RBN-2079) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
