Kids get a lot of crap pushed on them by adults.
And sometimes they are just pushed too far.
After fourth-grader Jordan Reed’s school took chocolate milk off the menu, he had had enough and he wasn’t going to take it lying down.
What children have had to endure over the last few years may have been necessary but doesn’t make it any less awful.
They were ripped from their schools and taken away from their classmates and friends and forced to take classes online with the help of parents who had no idea what they were doing.
When they finally were allowed to come back to the classroom they were forced to wear masks the entire day and were subjected to impersonal procedures that still kept them at a distance from one another.
Getting rid of chocolate milk in the cafeteria was crossing the line for Jordan.
“We used to have it,”Jordan told KCRA-TV, “but then they just took it away.”
The time had come to revolt. And that’s exactly what students at Sierra Vista K-8 School in Vacaville, CA did.
“Back when had chocolate milk when I was in fourth grade, you’d be lucky to get a spot for chocolate milk, because it would all be gone,” sixth-grade student Wesson Markowski told the news outlet.
The students staged a protest and hoisted signs high up into the air outside their schools saying “We need it please,” and “Less regular, more chocolate.”
And most pertinently “Justice.”
Of course, there were some grownups pulling the strings.
Teacher Emily Doss helped plan the protest to review what they learned earlier in the year about opinion, debate, and persuasive writing which featured a lesson about a fourth-grader from a different school who petitioned successfully for the return of strawberry milk in his school.
The school’s principal was made aware of the protest and the school called a news crew to cover it.
Jordan argued with the school’s district of nutrition that only providing regular causes food waste since students drink less of it, and while they might be getting less sugar they are missing out on other nutrients in chocolate milk like calcium and vitamin D.
In the end, they were able to successfully negotiate bringing back chocolate milk one day a week.
But the exercise wasn’t really about chocolate milk.
Jordan’s mom said it was about teaching a young person to be a “change agent” and inspire others to do the same.
“It started off as not being a big thing, and then it just kind of took off,” Doss told The Washington Post.“It was pretty cool to see … how it went from a review lesson to this huge life lesson for these kids.”
But Jordan still thinks it was about the chocolate milk.
That’s until he was pushed a bit by his mom, and came to the conclusion that he learned something after all: “Anybody can make change.”
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