Sharing Gratitude in Cafeterias Across the US

From playground messages of thanks in Wisconsin, to holiday meals with special guests in Tennessee and notes of appreciation in Pennsylvania, celebrations of Thanksgiving in school cafeterias across the country centered around gratitude. Many schools opened their doors to community members to celebrate Thanksgiving, making meals with local ingredients and love, while other school nutrition teams felt the appreciation and thanks this holiday for their everyday efforts.

The nutrition team for Holmen School District (Wisconsin) found a message written in chalk on the playground at Prairie View Elementary reading “Thank you, lunch ladies”.

At Pennsylvania’s Northeastern School District, a first grader thanked her favorite nutrition professional with a large handwritten message sharing that she’s a big fan of school lunch and loves the wonderful food.

A group of students from Clinton High School in Laurens County School District 56 (South Carolina) presented the nutrition team with a poster full of messages of gratitude, thanking them for being lunch heroes.

To share their thanks to the community, Pasadena Independent School District in Texas put together a special Thanksgiving lunch. Many of the district’s elementary schools invited parents and loved ones to share the meal with their students. The nutrition team made a traditional holiday meal with locally sourced foods including yeast rolls and gravy from a nearby company and milk from a co-op of family-owned and operated farms.

“It is an all-hands-on-deck lunch day since many campuses serve far more lunches than a usual day with the addition of all these visitors,” said Kari Kempf, Nutrition Coordinator for Pasadena Independent School District. Kempf says their peach crisp is so popular that they had to make extra for the staff who want to purchase an additional serving.

Pasadena ISD’s cafeteria managers and kitchen staff also take great care to decorate lines and serving areas and provide excellent meal presentations to add to the festivities. The nutrition teams at each school even coordinate their outfits for the day.

The Gravette School District in Arkansas marked the holiday by opening its cafeterias to families and the community to enjoy the traditional home-cooked meal of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. The Gravette Food Service Department says their annual Thanksgiving lunch is the highest-rated meal of the school year and that they have students and staff from all the district’s schools lining up to enjoy it. 

Tennessee’s Cheatham County School District also prepared a traditional Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings and invited parents and grandparents to enjoy it with students. The final tally of meals served was just over 3,700 for the week-long celebration.