School Spirit

I’ll open first by stating that this post is a bit of a gripe. It’s an issue that keeps popping its head up from time to time and, to be honest, I think it’s blown quite considerably out of proportion. And this issue of critical importance is teachers giving the odd lolly or unhealthy treat as a reward for good behaviour. With this apparent childhood obesity epidemic running rampant through Australia’s primary and secondary school aged population, the blow torch has fairly regularly been turned on us for having the good old lolly jar or similar sitting on the desk as the odd reward for good behaviour or winning some little competition within the classroom. Things like that. There have been pushes from various outside (and internal) sources to have things like this removed for the health and wellbeing of the children.

Well, I’m holding out against these invaders. My lolly jar is staying firmly on my desk and I’ll keep using it until some bureaucrat in a fancy suit makes it officially illegal and damaging to the chance to continue my career and forces me to remove it. Let me run through a few things.

This riled me yesterday afternoon while I was reading the daily Herald Sun newspaper after I’d spent the day at work. Specifically, the article ‘Mothers sour on sweets‘. More than 95% of parents surveyed claim their kids are receiving unhealthy treats for performing well. Surprise surprise! Of course they are. No argument there. Used well, it’s a cheap and effective and, more importantly, fun, little thing for the kids involved. Apparently though, according to these figures, 90% of these parents disapprove of the practice. News to me. I’ve yet to have any parent complain about the lolly jar sitting in plain sight on my desk. When most parents see it for the first time they look down at their little darling and suggest ‘you’d better behave if you want one of those, eh?’ In fact… I get a lot more complaints from parents about running the kids around the oval for various reasons.

Ironically, I read this article after spending the day with 60 odd kids at our local district school sports! I’ll post about that one later for a bit of good, light hearted stuff!

Back to this article though. It seems to even imply a negative response to the practice of kids bringing lolly bags and cupcakes to share with their class on their birthdays. It’s the kid’s birthday! If that’s not a traditional time to celebrate with a lolly or a little bit of cake, then when is? You see the kids walking in as proud as punch with another year on their age and a tupperware box filled with a cupcake for each kid (and the teacher, mind you!) that will take all of three bites to consume. Let the kids have their day, eh?

And yes, apparently there is a childhood obesity epidemic we’re not helping to remedy too. The odd lolly given out as a prize for working their backsides off compared to three or four laps of the oval each week. Which side of the ‘healthy/unhealthy’ kid ledger am I likely to have those kids on?

I’ve just looked through the class photos of each of my grades over the eight years I’ve been teaching. If I had to be mean and nasty, I could count 18 kids who would possibly be either fat or obese. Six of these play sport at quite a high level all the same. That’s less than 20 kids out of a total of about 420. Puppy fat, baby fat and kids who you know are going to shoot up and become string beans I’m not counting, and I don’t think they should be. Yep, lots of kids are unhealthily fat, but I’ve yet to see this range of 20-40% that is regularly bandied around. Personally, my figures are about 2%, but I must just be a little kinder on the little fellers burning off their baby fat.

Anyway, this is the way the lolly jar works on my desk. Firstly, if anyone is going to get fat from it, it’s going to be me. When the kids are elsewhere and I’m working alone in the room, I’m going to graze from the jar myself. Not to mention my practice of eating one of these lollies in front of the kids when they’re working too loudly. A quiet ‘you’re too noisy, I get a lolly’ shuts them up a lot more efficiently than calling out ‘too much noise, lower the volume or lose your tongue!’

Okay, that phrase has worked at times too, but the kids know you’re joking.

At the end of each week, we hold a raffle draw. One ticket is drawn out for each day we’ve been at school that week. Usually five, then. And each winning kid gets to choose one lolly from the jar. The largest lolly in this jar is probably a musk stick which has been broken in two. The rest are usually licorice allsorts, chocolate bullets or jelly beans. No matter the size, they win one lolly. So at the end of the week, five kids get one lolly. And you can bet there are fifteen to twenty other kids wishing they were the lucky winners instead. All for one lolly.

At the end of each fortnight, we see which table group won with the most table points. These lucky kids get two lollies for their two weeks of good work. Which means, if they’re lucky enough to also win the raffle draw, they walk out at the end of the week with three lollies!

We then add up the points for all four tables. If this combined total is higher than our previous high score, then every kid gets one lolly as a reward for the whole grade working well. This happens maybe once a term, which is good, because otherwise I’d be running out of money refilling my stocks! So, again, if a kid is really lucky that week, they might get a raffle prize, win the table points, and the grade might break their points record. Which means the kid might walk away at the end of the week with a total of four lollies.

Which apparently will set them on the path of childhood obesity.

I’m going to go back to the start of the week though and begin again. Monday mornings, unless it’s absolutely belting it down with rain, the kids all do a lap of the oval after assembly. Complaints fall on deaf ears unless they can show either a note from their parents or a plaster cast on their leg. As often as possible, the half hour before lunch after maths is a huff’n'puff session. Twenty odd minutes of physical activity outside after, yep, a lap of the oval. The kids could do up to six laps of this oval each week. Adding in the distance from the room to the oval and back, that’s about a kilometre over the week alread with recess and lunchtimes still to come.

We have the favourite ‘apple slinky’ machine in the room where at recess and lunchtime, kids can peel, core and slinky their apples to eat. Up goes the apple consumption of the school by about 200%! After lunch during silent reading, the kids are also allowed to eat any left over fruit they’ve brought from home. Twice a term we usually have a ‘healthy lunch’ day as well. If the kids have water in their drink bottles, they can keep them on their tables and use them throughout the day. Lots of healthy options and nutrition and fitness happening all week.

But at the end of the week a kid might get four lollies!

Surely there’s room for the odd lolly amidst all the fitness, healthy eating and exercise we also promote.

Yes, I know there are fat kids out there and schools are working their own weight off trying to bend their curriculum and timetables around new guidelines and requirements being passed down to us to keep these kids fit and healthy, but it goes too far sometimes. No lollies in the jar for the odd little treat that makes being a kid so much fun? Hopefully my parents will continue to let me reward their kids with the odd little morsel of sweet, sugary delight without worrying that I’m damaging the health of their little prides and joys.

I know there are a few readers out there with kids of their own. I’m looking at this purely from my side of the debate, but I honestly can’t see any serious reason other than allergies or similar to particular additives and so forth where, run like this (as the vast majorities of classrooms seem to) could realistically be seen as negligent. I’d be interested in any responses to either side, but I’ll say again though that I’ll fight to keep my lolly jar until they tell me ‘lose the jar or lose your job’.

Let the kids be kids while they still can, I reckon.

Cheers.

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