By Lynn Lewis

I had the opportunity to shadow Lauryn, a junior, at Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids for one day. The main point of shadowing Lauryn was to see the difference between their 1842 student school to our 400 student school. I was a bit intimidated walking into the school, which from the outside looked at least two times the size of our tiny little Mount Vernon.

When you first walk in you see a huge wood and metal staircase. Compared to out fairly new school it is much older. There are so many different components when it comes to Jefferson: The diversity of the students, the types of classes, and the relationships between students and teachers. But one main difference is their lunch.

Lunch is divided into three lunch periods: A, B, and C. When you pass by the lunch room you see round tables, reminding you of High School Musical. There are tables upon tables, but when it did reach lunch time there were too many students for those tables. Many sat on the floor, wandered the halls, or even ate in classrooms.

I brought money for lunch therefore I had to go through the line. Which wasn’t even a line, it was more of a cluster of people in one compact area. Finally, you get to your destination of food! To your left you have a wall, you get your tray and your main dish.
The day I went, Jeff was serving noodles with marinara meat sauce. I grabbed another choice–a slice of pizza. Then from the wall of food, you move onto the other food stations. There were about 3 to 4. It was hard to count with all of the people crowding around. There seemed to be little organization in this “food court”. You can choose two sides from any of the food stations. They had everything from a salad bar to fruit and veggies. I grabbed a huge pile of grapes, to play it safe.

Then from there you move to the register to get milk, a la carte, and pay. Their lunch is about 20 cents less than ours, but their a la carte is more expensive. When you reach the register you have the option to punch in your number like at our lunch, or pay with cash. My grand total was $4.05. I had gotten a carton of milk, pile of grapes, slice of pizza, and a cereal bar.

Overall, I like Jefferson a lot. There are more people to socialize with, the students are more respectful to the teachers, and their lunch is neat. I think our lunch and the organization of it is very bland. Although, I do think our food is better. Going to Jefferson High School made me thankful for going to Mount Vernon.