School lunches are being spiced up all week long with menus from Italy, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean and America. Diane McGee, the music teacher at Dondero for nine years, said she wanted to combine National School Lunch Week and the arrival of Columbus with her music program, which has been in place since last October's National School Lunch Week. For over a year now McGee has been playing classical, jazz and opera music in the cafeteria while students are eating their breakfasts and lunches. For Lunch Week the music is representative of the countries Columbus journeyed to during his expedition to America.
Kids can actually feel that they're in that country.
They're sending in CDs of music that maybe I don't have. It seems to be going very well. Nancy Brown, director of Portsmouth school food service and registered dietician, said Mcgee's ideas were great and have made this Lunch Week a success. Brown said the purpose of Lunch Week is to highlight the lunch program and to get parents educated about the variety of good food offered throughout the school system. I think kids expect to have a lot of choices, and we're trying to meet as many needs as possible.