Cecil Elementary School serves kids in a low-income Baltimore neighborhood; a community where the majority of students qualify for free lunch - and need it. It's also a school filled with people who believe in kids.
These are some of their stories.
Principal Nancy Forr began teaching at Cecil Elementary in 1987 - many of her current student’s parents weren't even in school then. But everyone in the neighborhood knows her as a relentless advocate for kids. Forr says that making breakfast part of the school day is a huge part of how her students consistently perform so well - despite the odds being stacked against them.
Cheryl Miles starting teaching at Cecil Elementary the same year as Principal Forr. Monday through Friday, for the past 27 years she has been waking up to get to school at 7 AM, thirty minutes before her students, preparing the classroom for their arrival. Even though she describes herself as “not being a morning person”, she gladly does what needs to be done in order to take care of her students.
When we asked her about the importance of serving breakfast in her classroom, she began to tear up. She told us that, for many of her students, school breakfast and lunch were the only meals that they could definitely count on every day. Serving breakfast in the classroom is, she said, is absolutely essential to their ability to learn.
The team at Cecil Elementary has come up with some clever ways to solve the barriers to delivering breakfast in big school. One of the most effective: using student hall monitors to help deliver breakfast each day. They respond well to the responsibility, and it takes the burden off the school faculty to make sure that everything is ready for the students every morning.
Like clockwork, Mrs. Miles' students show up every morning at 7:30 ready to learn. The first thing they do upon their arrival is eat breakfast as they read.
You can watch the kids slowly wake as they eat their breakfast. By the time they're done, they are ready to attack the day.
Skylar is an energetic, extroverted, smart kid. She insisted to us that breakfast was an essential to keep her focused on everything she had going on.
Talking with the staff and students at Cecil Elementary, you can see how much breakfast changes their entire day, right through gym - the last class of the day for the second-graders.
