Introduction
I teach 1 st grade at Wexler-Grant Community School in New Haven, Connecticut. We are a school that begins with headstart and ends with 8 th grade. We have an interesting history. We were two separate schools at one time: Helene W. Grant School and Isadore Wexler School. We merged during the 2002-2003 school year. Our population of students is approximately 90% African-American and the remaining 10% is made up of White, Hispanic, and Indian. We are a community school which means that our building is open to the neighborhood in a variety of ways. We open the gym to the youth so that they can play basketball, the cafeteria is used for African drumming, Tai Chi, Pilates, and more. Other types of meetings, seminars, conferences, and workshops take place in our building for various organizations throughout the community. We have a family resource room that provides services for parents, grandparents, and students. We try to truly embrace and embody the concept of community, which is included in our name.
I have been working in the New Haven school system since 1997. I have worked in classrooms from grades kindergarten to 8 th. I have seen children of all different sizes. Growing up, there was always the one "fat" kid in class. "Fat" is not a term that I like to use in describing someone's size, but it is commonly used by children. When I was a child, it was a term that was used by kids to describe other kids who were overweight. In my ten years of teaching, there has been an increase in students who might be considered to be "fat." No longer is it just the one child who is overweight, but there are several children who could be deemed as such. I can remember growing up that kids who were overweight were often believed to be carrying "baby fat" and they would grow out of it. Many times, this was the case. I just attended the high school graduation of some of my first students; they were in my 3 rd grade class in 1998. Some of those students had "baby fat" back then. As they walked across the stage, I noticed that many of them still had that same "baby fat" nine years later. What has happened? I was one of those kids who had some "baby fat" and grew out of it. Why are children today not losing the "baby fat?"
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