This is Jenny writing again to share a new experience at a recent Fishbowl meeting at Sequoia High School.

What's a Fishbowl?  It's a meeting where youth are asked to share their opinions about a certain topic. It's a chance for students to be carefully heard by adults and for adults to be carefully heard by students. The room is set up with chairs in a circle in the middle of the room. 

At the last meeting, which unfortunately I wasn't able to attend, students conversed about their school lunches.  This time adults with different roles in the district got the opportunity to elaborate on what they feel and hear from students about school lunches. The facilitator asked questions to get the discussion moving, and as it went on I discovered that district staff feel almost the same way as students do about their lunches. Staff want every student that eats lunch at school to get what they need out of their meals. And they want the meal to taste good and be fulfilling. 

Getting school lunches to be not only healthy but also affordable will be a long (hopefully not too long right?) but doable task. Many people are fighting to get healthier school lunches, and you can too. Ask your teachers and other school staff if they know when the next Fishbowl meeting is. And if your school has never had a Fishbowl, ask if you can have one.  Who knows, maybe your voice is the voice that pushes it all!