Lyndsey's Teaching Showcase

Are vending machines reflective of cultural control over food consumption? The peanut butter cups, pepperoni pizza, and can of Pepsi was a mainstay for my lunch meals in high schools.  In the 1990s, the options for vending machines and counter lunch items were a teenagers dream.  Bags of chips, candy, burritos, and most of it coming from industrial sources, it was not unusual for my lunch to be around 2500 calories.  The establishment of eating habits in schools has been significantly researched and written about, but the aspect that I want to examine is whether or not vending machines reflect a cultural control of the access to food consumption on campuses. After the 2000s, the obesity epidemic was on a substantial incline (Spring, 2016) and for the first time, the Department of Defense indicated a struggle ( DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AGENCIES, ORGANIZATIONS 'TAKE THE PLEDGE' TO COMBAT CHILDHOOD OBESITY, 2016) in recruitment due to the amount of candidates requiring wei...

Should High School students have compulsory service learning that is not political? One of the latest additions to requirements for high school graduation is service learning.  As defined in the text  American Education   " Service learning is a form of civic education rather than an education for direct involvement in politics. It is based on a belief that voluntary engagement in civic organizations and community work is necessary for the maintenance of a just society." (Spring, 2018) It would appear that this practice does not emphasize the need for learning the political world, or leaves that learning for upper-income districts.  This devolution ends up being stratified by the access school districts have to local community groups, and as Spring stated in Chapter 1, that this stratification has increased, it would seem that service learning is a step down from the intent of civics education.  When schools accept that ignoring the political process is thei...