It’s been quite a long time since I sat in a middle school classroom, but what I learned in my sixth-grade social studies class will never leave me. That year, thanks to the lessons on civic engagement from our soon-to-be-retired teacher, I learned how to use my civic powers for good and how to engage in collective action.
The cause? Chocolate chip cookies, a beloved treat especially among middle schoolers. That spring the special education students opened a small school store adjacent to the lunchroom. It was a new student-run project, and the store was mostly stocked with candy, treats, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. It was open during lunch period. After a month of the store opening, the cafeteria workers noticed a steep decline in hot lunch sales. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise that students would take their lunch money to the store and buy chips and cookies instead of whatever slop was offered in the lunchroom. Students now had options well beyond French bread pizza, watery canned green beans, and meatloaf. Hot lunch sales declined, and the school enacted a tough rule against the store. Now students were only allowed to patronize the store if they had a receipt from their hot lunch or proof that they ate their bagged lunch. Boyne City Middle School students, all 250 of us, once had a small taste of what money and options could buy, and now it was taken away. The special education students were devastated because they were running a successful operation and they understood, with these restrictions in place, most kids would not be able to buy those gooey cookies if they had to use their lunch money at the cafeteria.
It was the talk of the playground, and our complaints made it into the classroom. And while most teachers brushed it aside, this situation was the perfect real-life learning opportunity our teacher seized upon. Instead of relying on textbooks and projector slides to talk about forms of government and historical upheavals Mr. Baptiste let us explain the problem, listened to our concerns, and gave us an opportunity to discover a solution. We drafted a formal complaint to our vice principal citing the injustice of the decision toward the students who worked hard to create a successful store, the nebulous ruling on policing what we ate, and how this new ruling, which required the beleaguered cafeteria staff to check lunch boxes and write tickets for hot lunches consumed, increased labor costs. The school didn’t budge, so with our teacher’s guidance — although he was careful to remain out of the specifics — we decided to rally all the fifth through eighth graders and stage a one-day protest where no one would buy hot lunch. We would be peaceful and polite with our brown bags and PBJs.
The plan made the classroom and administrative office rounds and before the big day happened, I was called into a joint chief of cafeteria staff meeting. Somehow, I became the defacto protest leader and my teacher was thrilled that our protest garnered the attention of the administration because they wanted to negotiate. Another important lesson! I went to the meeting, listened to their concerns, and assured them that no student was being pressured if they, for whatever reason, including an inability to bring in their own lunch on the day of the protest, couldn’t or wouldn’t participate. Unless the school wanted to discuss with us about finding common ground on the school store, the protest was scheduled as planned. That day arrived and not one student ate hot lunch that day.
A few days later, the school reversed their decision allowing students to enter the free market of lunch options. The school store ran out of cookies that day before the seventh graders got to the cafeteria. Everyone was ready to celebrate.
As a class we were surprised with the outcome, and I wonder if Mr. Baptiste was surprised, too. Or perhaps he knew that with the right situation, he could inspire a group of students to use their powers for good.