At Perea Preschool in Memphis, Tennessee, a teacher introduces mango to a circle of 16 4-year-olds for the first time. Another day, the children discover pumpkin during a play activity. Most of these children come from impoverished families where lettuce is considered a luxury item. According to Vicki Sallis Murrell, a professor of counseling, educational psychology, and research at the University of Memphis, parents are making tough choices between a $1 head of lettuce and five boxes of macaroni and cheese.
“In the middle of a food desert, grocery stores with reasonably priced, quality produce and fish are difficult to find,” Murrell said. But parents are making sacrifices to provide healthy food for their families because they know their kids want and need it. “If my kids didn’t go to Perea, they wouldn’t want to eat vegetables,” said Scharica Martin, a former Perea parent. But because all three of her children attended the school, healthy food is one of her family’s biggest budget items.
Perea is funded by a local health care organization, and nutrition is a key component of the curriculum. The school operates with the idea that students and their families do best when they know that good nutrition aids brain development—and ultimately, the development of cognitive skills. Enrollment has grown by more than 300 percent since the school was founded in 1999.
[For more of this story, written by Reyna Gobel, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...e-curriculum/515622/]
Comments (0)