Lunch for breakfast?
‘A’ block lunches are just too early
Pepper Construction
The ‘A’ lunch block leaves students eating their lunches at the unreasonable hour of 10:20 in the morning
What hour would you consider to be acceptable for eating lunch? 11:00 AM, for a nice brunch, maybe. Noon sounds perfectly reasonable. Most of us would laugh at the notion of eating lunch at 10:20 in the morning. As someone who’s stuck with eating that early because of the ‘A’ block, I definitely do.
New Trier made a big mistake when it created the ‘A’ block lunch schedule. The B block is forgivable, starting at 11:05 and ending at 11:45, and the C block, 11:50-12:30, is exactly the time you’d expect to be let out of your classes and get into the pizza, pasta or burrito lines. But 10:20 AM? Really?
This isn’t some post-Covid, block schedule phenomenon. Back in the old days, when we had forty minute periods, the earliest lunch period was 10:15.
10:20 AM is not the time to eat greasy, calorie-loaded lunches. I really like the lunches they serve at New Trier (please note the usage of lunch). I’m particularly favorable towards the pasta line. However, I don’t want to break my fast with Alfredo pasta in the mornings.
Obviously, there are alternatives at New Trier. There are doughnuts, muffins, yogurt, and other traditional breakfast foods. But I don’t care. These are nice foods to eat before you start your day. They aren’t meant to be eaten as something to keep you full for the next five hours. Just to keep myself full throughout the day, I ended up buying a yogurt, two Cliff bars, and a donut. This shouldn’t be necessary.
There is no winning with the ‘A’ Block lunch. Either you eat your pizza four hours after you’ve woken up, or you eat a small cup of yogurt only for your stomach to hurt from hunger during your last two classes of the day.
I understand the choice that New Trier made. There are around 3,000 students on the Winnetka campus alone, which means the cafeteria is not equipped to feed all those students at once. But I just don’t think the division of lunches was made with enough thought in terms of when lunches will occur. I understand there needs to be three different schedules for lunchtime, but why make one of them 10 in the morning?
There are two options to amend the situation: either provide breakfast foods that are both filling and healthy for the ‘A’ block kids, or find a new schedule that doesn’t leave students eating at unforgivable hours.
In short, students need healthy options for their breakfast. I mean, lunch. Wait. Which one is it again?