Lunch Lady Appreciation

Aubrey Johnson
May 11
8 min read

May is a month of celebration. Not only does it mean the end of the school year, but there are several national days/ weeks of recognition - National School Principals Day (May 1), National School Nurse Day (the Wednesday of National Nurse Week), Teacher Appreciation Week (the first full week of May), Mother’s Day, and, lastly, the lesser recognized National School Lunch Hero Day (the first Friday in May). I had never heard of National School Lunch Hero Day, a day to recognize school nutrition professionals, until I was a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member and worked closely with cafeteria staff and teachers. My role was educating students about healthy food choices in classrooms, cafeterias, and their homes. If you were like me and didn’t attend a school that celebrates National School Lunch Hero Day, you may never have heard of it either. It was started in 2013 by the School Nutrition Association and Jarrett J. Krosoczka. Krosoczka wrote a series of graphic novels about a Lunch Lady who is not only a cafeteria worker but also a crime-fighting spy. The books are geared towards elementary-aged children, and while not everyone’s lunch lady masquerades as a crime fighter after serving lunch to the hungry masses, the idea of a cafeteria worker wearing multiple hats and going unnoticed is not foreign.

If you were not homeschooled, the idea of a “lunch lady” or cafeteria worker can conjure various images in one’s head. You could have been served freshly cooked food by someone resembling your grandmother. She came around the counter to hug you or ask about your siblings, who went on to another school or graduated. Or, a different, less matronly older man or woman could have yelled to keep you moving through the line. You took what you got, and you didn’t throw a fit, regardless of whether you recognized the food under the brown gravy. If you were lucky, you looked forward to pizza Fridays and Thanksgiving meals before the holiday breaks. Sure, it wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it wasn’t terrible for school food. Depending on the size and budget of the school one attended, lunches may have been freshly cooked at the school kitchen or mass-produced elsewhere and driven in, hopefully resembling what it once was. My memories at school and lunchtime are a mix of all of those - some from when I was a student and others from when I worked at schools. There is one addition, though. My mom was a cafeteria worker for about 10 years. As such, I heard about her experience behind the counter before I was allowed behind the counter as a FoodCorps service member, a similar but different experience for me in Connecticut and Montana.

My mom worked at my town’s junior high and high school cafeterias, and switched between the two over her 10 years working for the district. The job offered some cushion in terms of supplemental income for our family, but more than that, it offered flexible hours so she could be available for her family both before and after school, as well as in the summer. She could drop off and pick up my brother and me from school, and she could be home in the afternoon to greet my dad when he got off from work, and then make dinner for the family. Once my brother and I finished school, she didn’t feel a need to continue working. The extra income and flexible hours weren’t necessary, but more than that, the culture was not worth it. Several times, she told stories of staff members outside of the kitchen feeling entitled to take something without paying for it, or they talked to my mom or other kitchen staff in a derogatory manner. Kids were often the source of disrespectful behavior from her point of view, and as a teacher, I understand that kids’ behavior is a reflection of their parents, especially when students are still learning. I felt judged for her when I knew that students didn’t show respect to cafeteria staff like they should. When I heard about adults - other school staff members - acting in an entitled or disparaging manner, I could understand why my mom chose to leave the job. It wasn’t worth it. And a positive work environment is everything.

When I found out that part of my role as a FoodCorps service member was to partner with cafeteria staff to promote healthy food through cafeteria taste tests and encourage partnership with local growers and producers, I didn’t know what to expect. I grew up in Oklahoma, not the northeast or Montana, where I was going to serve. As such, I didn’t know if my service sites’ schools and cafeterias would resemble what I knew. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised. And in terms of size and demographics, the two districts could not have been more different. They did both have a shared vision of excellence in quality and nutrition for school food. In Connecticut, I served at two schools within the New Haven Public School District. According to their website, the food service department is made up of over 200 employees working in 44 cafeterias, driving delivery trucks, or cooking or working in the central kitchen offices. They serve over 7.5 million meals in a typical school year (New Haven Public Schools Child Nutrition Program).

Two women standing in a kitchen, the one on the right wears an apron decorated with fruit and veggie superheroes, drawn by students. — Alice, one of my school's lead cooks, and me on School Lunch Hero Day, my students decorated an apron for her!

Livingston Public Schools in Montana was quite a bit smaller. When I was there, there were five schools in town for which the high school kitchen staff cooked, but it has since gone down to four (K-2nd; 3rd-5th; 6th-8th; 9th-12th). Around 20 staff members make and serve meals for the staff and students of Livingston year-round, both breakfast and lunch both during the school year and for their summer meal program. FoodCorps has since left both Montana and New Haven (although there are currently 12 Connecticut service members at five other locations in the state), but the partnerships and values FoodCorps started and lived out are carried on in both locations. Connecticut and Montana are both full of local farms. This made it easy to find farmers willing to sell to school districts. Each district where I served had school food service heroes who made fresh, local food a priority. There was, for sure, a learning curve for some staff members who were used to dumping #10 cans and heating trays of frozen foods. Not everything fresh-cooked is fast, but not everything has to be freshly cooked. Even buying apples from a local orchard helped kids in the city feel more connected if they knew their apple was grown a few miles down the road. During the time I served in Connecticut, the other New Haven FoodCorps service member and I made fresh recipes using local ingredients. We served these taste tests to K-8th-grade students at our four schools. While I don’t see peach salsa, butternut squash hummus, or spinach/beet/pear salad on their menu, I do see plenty of food that I would have enjoyed growing up. The meals meet nutrition requirements, are culturally appropriate for the diverse population, have freshly cooked components, and utilize local growers. There’s chicken fajitas on whole grain wraps, pulled turkey barbacoa, beef steak and cheese on whole grain sub rolls, whole grain lo mein noodles with chicken teriyaki, Mesquite chicken and waffles with cauliflower rice, fresh smoothies, salads, and fruits and veggies. Livingston has a smaller staff but also fewer students to feed than a district in the thousands. As such, more scratch cooking can be done.

A blonde woman with a face mask on holding a sheet pan of one giant blueberry scone in a commercial kitchen — Me holding my sheet-pan "scone" that was cut for a cafeteria taste test

Homemade granola bars, blueberry scones, and muffins are just a few scratch-made items that their “Livingston Lunch Crew” makes for their students and staff. When I was a service member, I made blueberry scones and granola bars for a taste test, so it’s great to see similar recipes added to their permanent rotation. Additionally, Farm to School of Park County continues to grow produce for recipes, salad bars, and fresh veggies to fill lunch trays, and procurement is factored into the meal program’s budget. Similarly, local producer partnerships are still going strong. Beef used in their meals comes from Muddy Creek Ranch, a local beef producer. In a state with more cows than people, there’s no reason schools wouldn’t utilize local sources.

Today is Mother’s Day, and while not all of the lunch ladies I have known are moms (most of them were), they are all strong women. I remember Alice and Heather, the lead cooks at my two schools in Connecticut, and Gayle, the Food Service Director for New Haven. She commuted in on the train daily from Rhode Island, where she and her husband ran a Bed and Breakfast.

Four ladies with face masks on stand at a counter in a commercial kitchen. They have aprons on and a pan of chicken is in front of them, ready to be served. — The original Livingston Lunch Ladies with our Farm to School Chef Carole (from left: Carole, Tina, Leslie, Michele)

Michele was Livingston’s Food Service Director while I was there, and her two lead cooks were Leslie and Tina. There were some growing pains when Farm to School started incorporating more fresh-made items since the kids (and adults) weren’t used to so many vegetables. They were willing to work with us, though, and I felt like I was allowed into their club by getting to make cinnamon rolls with Leslie (and cupcakes for her daughter’s wedding!). If you’ve never been to Montana, chili and cinnamon roll day at public schools is a staple. Cinnamon rolls were a special treat for an additional purchase (not served with every meal like on chili day in Montana) at my junior high and high school growing up. My mom worked with an older lady named Virginia who did the baking for our schools. It was a good day when there were cinnamon rolls to be bought or freshly baked rolls on our trays!

A woman helps make cinnamon rolls. She scoops cinnamon and sugar to sprinkle on the dough rolled out on a countertop. A pan of cinnamon rolls ready to bake sits on a cart next to her. — I help make cinnamon rolls in the high school kitchen.

Regardless of whether you grew up eating school food or bringing your lunch, if you have kids or interact with school cafeteria staff, I hope you realize how hard-working they are. They do important work by feeding kids, an often overlooked role. As important as it is for kids to have nutritious meals so they can learn in school, the workers deserve dignity and respect. And while scratch cooking is nice, not every district has the luxury of the funds, time, and staff required. The meals do need to meet national nutrition standards, though. So the next time you hear your kid complain about school food, listen, but then, if you can’t do anything about it, tell them that the workers may not be able to either. But everyone still deserves a “thank you.”

When I think back on my time in Livingston with the lunch ladies, I think of beets. They were one of the vegetables that the staff was sure the kids would not want. Farm to School introduced quite a few beet recipes into the menu, including beet ketchup, roasted beets and potatoes, beet hummus (recipe below), and beet brownies. Before all of that, though, Leslie made a beet chocolate cake for Valentine’s Day. There was probably more sure in the cake and frosting than beets, but it was a small step in a “hidden-vegetable” direction. In The Harvest Baker, Ken includes three recipes that remind me of Leslie and her chocolate beet cake - Whole Wheat Blueberry Beet Muffins, Chocolate Beet Cake, and Spiced Beet Cake with Citrus Glaze. None of them includes frosting and are more “healthy,” although sugar is still an added ingredient, and I’d recommend any for a foray into the beet world. You may become a fan like me! The blueberries disguise the beet flavor in the muffins. For the chocolate cake, the chocolate does mask the beet flavor somewhat, but it’s a heavy cake, so small servings are best. The spiced beet cake was a favorite, though. Red or golden beets can be used. The color of the red beets mellowed while baking. Share what your favorite beet baked good is, and remember, not all heroes wear capes! Some wear aprons.