This week, HISD Nutrition Services encouraged students to start their day with school breakfast as they took part in celebrating National School Breakfast Week.
Observed from March 4-8, the national campaign brings attention to school breakfast programs and emphasizes the importance of providing students with a healthy breakfast every day.
As part of the weeklong celebration, every HISD elementary student eating school breakfast this week was given a trading card featuring this year’s “Start Your Engines” theme. Students were able to collect and trade the three different cards, each of which highlighted a popular breakfast item and included a fun fact.
“Breakfast is important because it provides kids with the nutrition they need and prepares them to get ready to learn,” said Wharton second grade teacher Mercedes Negrón, whose students eat breakfast in the classroom like many of their counterparts across the district.
Negrón said the practice provides students with valuable social time that they enjoy before she starts instruction and prepares them for the day to come.
According the School Nutrition Association, studies have shown that students who eat breakfast have better memory and concentration, are more alert, maintain a healthy weight, perform better in reading and math, and score higher on standardized tests.
Wharton second-grader Kylie Blanco is young, but she said she already understands the importance of a healthy breakfast.
“Breakfast gets me ready for my school days,” Kylie said as she ate her school breakfast in her classroom on Wednesday. “It provides muscles in my body and wakes me up.”
Patricia Vargas, the Nutrition Services cafeteria team lead assigned to Wharton, is responsible for ensuring healthy breakfasts are prepared and available to the school’s students every day. She said she understands the importance of making sure breakfast is available to each student.
“It fuels them and gets them ready for their day’s work,” Vargas said.