The Austin ISD Wellness Policy is a new rule being implemented at Bowie that bans teachers from giving out candy to students to “improve better nutrition” this policy is completely unnecessary. Teachers rarely give us candy and if they do it’s as a reward for doing good things, so not letting us have candy ruins the fun and makes students less likely to want to answer and participate.
The policy doesn’t allow teachers to give out any foods of minimal nutrition value which includes soda, water ices, candies and even candied covered popcorn. Maybe instead of banning candy all together you can tell the teachers to slow down on how much candy they give out, they should allow giving out lollipops, or even jolly ranchers, or maybe even just make them get zero sugar candy, and most teachers pay for the candy they give to students with their own money, teachers like giving it out as a reward so why ban it?
Some teachers give donuts to their class with the highest average or if you do good on a test they give candy it’s their way to make students try harder and for me it works, when I hear “if you answer this question right you get candy” I automatically know that I need to try harder to get the question right.
It’s ironic that they banned the candy to make us more healthy yet the vending machines of our school are full of chocolate rice krispies and other unhealthy food. One single lollipop from answering a question right isn’t going to affect our diets, we are still kids at the end of the day so candy is candy it’s going to make students more engaged and want to answer questions and participate.
On the AISD website it shows alternate ways to reward students instead of candy this list complies of stickers, pencils, erasers, books, bookmarks and a trip to a treasure box with non-food items, we aren’t in Elementary school anymore so these things don’t really grab the attention of teenagers, especially not a treasure box, if you’re going to ban the candy at least give us a better alternate rather than bookmarks.
School already lacks excitement and so taking away something that is exciting and fun ruins the joy of school, it’s just annoying because the reason they banned the candy was for health purposes but little pieces of candy aren’t going to affect our health the candy has way more benefits then disadvantages so the policy definitely needs to be fixed.
