My third year teaching, I had a sophomore in my fifth period class who I’ll call Andrew. Andrew was one of those students who literally could not sit still. At his desk, his heels would rapidly tap the floor, causing his legs to frenetically bounce up and down. Simultaneously, his fingers, or the writing utensil they held, would be drumming on the top of his desk, his shoulders often bumping up and down to the rhythm. Not to be left out, his head would constantly be swiveling around in circles, his neck stretching as if he had a constant knot in it he had to work out.
This physical chaos extended into his speech. I know words aren’t usually described as being able to tap, bounce, drum, bump, or swivel, but they did when Andrew spoke. He would move from one topic to another mid-sentence, and rarely came to a conclusion that was anywhere near the question he initially started to answer.
I liked Andrew. He was a kind person, and he expressed a feeling of powerlessness to the overactive firing of his synapses. In his relatively short life, he had been diagnosed with pretty much every emotional-behavioral disorder in the book, and at that time was taking medication for ADHD, OCD, and anxiety. He was open about taking this medication, and he felt it was helping him. One day a student asked him to stop moving so much during class, and Andrew said, “I’m not moving SO much! You should see me when I don’t take my meds. That’s when it gets crazy!”
About halfway through the year, Andrew’s schedule changed and he was now in my first period class. While students weren’t allowed to eat in class, many of my first period students would bring their breakfast into my classroom and eat it there before class started. Usually these breakfasts would be what the school provided–often cheerios and milk, or sometimes a breakfast burrito, occasionally some fruit and yogurt. A few of the students would bring their own breakfasts, which they had usually picked up at the corner bodega on their way to school. These store-bought breakfasts were almost always a variation on a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. When his schedule changed, I learned that Andrew bought his breakfast at the bodega, but that he didn’t opt for the breakfast sandwich.
The first day, Andrew’s breakfast was a bag of tropical Skittles and a Mountain Dew. I watched him come into my classroom, calmer in the morning than I had ever seen him, and I remember the feeling of horror I had watching him consume the pure sugar that I knew would fuel his physical turbulence later on that day. The next day, Andrew’s breakfast was four chocolate-glazed donuts and another Mountain Dew–a red one this time. The third day he was quietly eating a bag of Doritos (a relative step in the right direction, I thought), and when he was done, he pulled a Monster energy drink out of his bag, and started chugging. I felt like I had to acknowledge what I perceived as complete insanity occurring in my classroom in some way.
“Andrew, are you drinking an energy drink?” I asked.
“Yeah. Monster. Love it,” he replied.
Another student nonchalantly chimed in. “I feel bad for your teachers today. You’re going to be crazy.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew. “I feel bad for them too.”
Three years later, Andrew barely graduated–a little bit behind schedule, but “better late than forever”, he said. Like so many students, I thought the hug we shared at his graduation was the last contact I’d ever have with him.
So, I was surprised when, a few years after he graduated, Andrew came walking into my classroom. He had always been tall, but I remembered him as being rail-thin, almost skeletal. He had filled out and cut a rather imposing figure. At first I didn’t recognize him–he had caught me off-guard and it wasn’t until I heard his voice that I realized who he was.
“Miss Will, don’t you remember me?” he asked with a smile. I smiled back, genuinely happy to see him.
“Of course I remember you, Andrew,” I said, and we began to catch up. He was apprenticing for a fashion photographer, and he showed me some of his recent work. I was impressed, and proud of him, and I told him as much. But I felt as though I had to address the elephant in the room.
“I have to say, Andrew, you are so different now than you were in high school. I always knew that you were capable of doing something like this, but we couldn’t really have conversations like this back then. You seem very different now,” I said.
Andrew’s smile and laughter validated my comment. “Sometimes when I think about high school, I feel so bad. I put you teachers through hell. But I was always trying–it just didn’t come through.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“This might sound crazy, but right after I graduated I started dating a girl who is super into food and eating healthy. She made fun of me for the junk I was eating, and so I stopped. You have to make the girlfriend happy, you know?” He said.
“I suppose,” I said laughing. “So, you’re telling me that you stopped eating junk food, and that’s why you’re so different now?”
“Well, maybe–I don’t know. I started to feel better on days I didn’t eat junk. So then I started going to the gym because I’ve always wanted muscles. And then on days when I went to the gym, I felt like I didn’t want to eat junk. So, I don’t really know exactly what it is, but I know that I feel better now not eating junk than I did back then.” Andrew paused before, in his characteristic openness, he said proudly, “I only need to take my one medication for anxiety now. No more shelves full of pills.”
I told Andrew again how proud I was of him, and after a little bit, he left. I never saw him again, but I think about him every time I see a student eating, as Andrew would say, “junk”. I’m not saying that all of the changes I saw in Andrew had to do with his change in diet, but I think we underestimate the effects of food on our mental health and behavior, and that of our children and students.
While teenagers have a reputation for making poor dietary choices, as adults we bear a responsibility to help them understand the lasting impact of these choices. When discussing cells and metabolism with my students, the reality of the old adage “you are what you eat” becomes apparent. Your cells can only work with what you give them, and if you are barraging them with the artificial compounds found in most processed foods, they will eventually begin to protest. This call for help from your cells can come in the form of a myriad of health and mental issues, and I think we often ignore these complaints. What real chance are we giving our students, especially those who struggle with behavioral or learning issues, if we are not addressing the fact that they are often fueling their cells with junk?
I don’t advocate for dietary control–I think that everyone should have the right to eat what they want. But I do think that we, as educators, can start considering the effect of our students’ diets on their personal and academic growth. At my current school, we are constantly talking about the challenge of helping our students understand the virtue in forgoing temporal pleasure, and I think we could easily extend this thinking to the immediate pleasure they get from eating candy, drinking soda, or consuming other “junk”. Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
While Andrew initially stopped eating junk to make his girlfriend happy, I think it ended up making him much happier as well. I know a change in diet won’t solve all of the problems our students face, but at least being aware of the impacts of food on our mental and physical health is a step in the right direction, especially for our students who struggle the most. Even though bringing up dietary choices can be a touchy subject, we owe it to our students to at least consider amongst ourselves the impact that junk can have on their lives, and think about how we can impact that. For example, I used to give students candy on special occasions, but I no longer do. Instead, we do an activity as a class to build relationships with one another to celebrate the end of a unit or a holiday. Not being complicit in students choosing to eat junk, for me, feels like the right thing to do.
The Classical Classroom 