Listen to the interview with Wanda and Aaron Henkin from WYPR.

Name: Wanda Moore
Job title: Cafeteria Manager III
Photograph location: photographed at KIPP Harmony Elementary School
Years of service: 24
We basically come in and we cook meals for over a thousand kids or more. It’s pretty hectic, but we love what we do. Feeding the kids is everything to us. We know when it’s a pizza day be prepared, we might feed more than maybe twelve hundred kids. We love pizza day. – Wanda Moore

Wanda Moore_KIPP Harmony_09-02-21
Transcript of Wanda Moore’s interview with Aaron Henkin by Rev.com

Wanda Moore:
My name is Wanda Moore. I’m located at…
Wanda Moore:
I’m sorry. I started off wrong.
Aaron Henkin:
Yeah, sure that’s fine.
Wanda Moore:
My name is Wanda Moore. I’m at KIPP Elementary, located at 2000 Edgewood. I’ve been here for over five years now and I’ve been working for food nutrition for 25 years.
Aaron Henkin:
Tell me your title. Tell me what you do here. Tell me what an average day is like.
Wanda Moore:
Okay. My morning starts off at seven. Basically. We come in and we prepping…
Aaron Henkin:
You’re doing great. You’re doing great.
Wanda Moore:
Okay. Thank you.
Wanda Moore:
I’m a manager three. I’ve been here at KIPP for five years now. I’ve been an assistant for almost 25 years. We basically come in and we cook meals for over a thousand kids or more, and it’s pretty hectic, but we love what we do. So feeding the kids is everything to us. So we kind of you’re used to it being as though it’s so many kids, but you come and do what you have to do.
Aaron Henkin:
25 years. Rewind 25 years and tell me how you found your way down this path in the first place.
Wanda Moore:
Well, I was introduced to Food & Nutrition and by my sister, she’s a manager as well. And we both here, both of us have been here over 25 years and you love it. You love coming to work and the years just passed on. And we never even thought about how many years it’s actually been.
Aaron Henkin:
Talk to me about, you say you feed a thousand kids day. Talk about what goes into feeding a thousand kids a day.
Wanda Moore:
A lot of hands. A lot of prepping, a lot of washing and cleaning and make sure everything is prepared fresh, make sure everything is prepared presentable. And just in a lot of love.
Aaron Henkin:
When you started this job, what were the things that surprised you most about what went into this work? What did you have to learn how to do? What was that learning curve like for you?
Wanda Moore:
Learning was, that wasn’t a hard part. I think that was easy because you do everything in repetition. You do it every day so, that was easy. The love part came in was with the kids. Getting to see their kids and coming in and smiling and seeing them every day. And you actually getting to know the kids in the years that you’ve been here.
Wanda Moore:
I have an interesting story where I worked at an elementary school for over 10 years. So I saw the kids come in as a young age, probably pre-K, and they left in the eighth grade. He graduated out of school. My position changed. I became a floater. So I get to move around to different schools, never thought I was going to see the kids that I met was in kindergarten. So after I left that Glen Allen Elementary for over 10 years. One of the staff member was throwing pictures away.
Wanda Moore:
And I was like, no, please don’t throw them away. Can I have them? I kept them. So when I became a floater, I start seeing the kids on a picture that was in pre-K now. And I get to see them at high school and I get to present them with their picture. And when I did that, those kids were so amazed, not only them, the principal, because I had showed her first. So she know what I was showing the kids, but I was amazed that the principal knew her kids as well as I did.
Wanda Moore:
And that’s one thing about working with food nutrition. We know the kids and see the kids just as much as the teachers do, because when they come to lunch, we seeing everybody. So I love that part.
Aaron Henkin:
Talk a little bit about the nutrition part of your job. Talk about the science and the thought that goes into making sure these kids are eating well and eating a healthy food. And maybe also some of the challenges that go along with broadening their horizons to try that food.
Wanda Moore:
That would start with Ms. Ran, our dietician, because she prepare our meals and everything. And she make sure it’s a nutritionist meal for the kids, that they get their balance of their meats, their grain and their fruit, their vegetables. So, we just present the food where the kids… Because you know, kids eat with their eyes. So we try to present the food in a way where they would want to try it. Or we would say, “Hey, we tried and let’s see what you think about it.” And the kids, they love that. And they interested as well and they will try the food.
Aaron Henkin:
Talk about what the kids’ favorite foods are. The days when you better have a lot on hand.
Wanda Moore:
That will be a pizza day. Pizza products and chicken. They love those items. So we know when it’s a pizza day be prepared, it’s going to be a lot of kids coming in. And when I say there’re 1000 kids, now on pizza day, we might feed more than maybe 1200 kids. So we love pizza day.
Aaron Henkin:
Tell me about the past, I guess, year and a half now, the pandemic. Talk about how the pandemic changed your job.
Wanda Moore:
Ooh, the pandemic. We never experienced this. So it was really hard for everybody trying to stay your distance from each other. When you’re so used to working with coworkers, and you touch them and everything, and now you have to stay your distance. So I think that was more of the hardest problem. But far as serving the public, we had a system with though we didn’t really interact with the public.
Wanda Moore:
So it was just kind of hard working with your coworkers and knowing to try to stay your distance. So I would try to separate, they would work at different stations. So that way you still can talk, which you have to stay your distance. So, that worked out pretty good. And we are people, we just adjust to what’s going on. We just try to do our job and also stay safe in the process.
Aaron Henkin:
It’s the beginning of a new school year here. Talk about what it’s like to have kids back in the building and to be seeing them face to face again.
Wanda Moore:
That’s a great experience to have them coming back, because then it seemed like you starting to feel like we’re going back to being normal, but we not. But that feeling is just give you, we going to get it back to where it was beforehand. But it’s still make you nervous. So you have to keep telling the kids, stay your distance because them as well, they not used to it either. So they want to be all up on each other. So we got to keep reminding them to have your mask on and stay your distance for safety.
Aaron Henkin:
I wonder if you might have a story to share that opened your eyes to the importance of what you’re doing, in the sense of the need out there for kidS to be fed on a stable basis. Talk about the need that you see and the need that you serve.
Wanda Moore:
Well, just for preparing the food and the kids that come in and there’s so many of them, that’s when we know we’re doing a good job. We know we are feeding kids because they’re coming in. Even when we was doing the outside, feeding the public, when someone show up and they hungry and we feed them, we know we’re doing a good job because people showing up, we just not sitting there. We are serving the community. So that was a great plus for us. So we love that.
Aaron Henkin:
What do you think some of the misconceptions are about what you and your staff do? What do you want people to understand about the work you do? And what’s important about it?
Wanda Moore:
That we put a lot of time in to prepare these meals. We put a lot of love in it and feeding over a 1000/1200 kids. That’s pretty a lot. That’s a lot of work. So I guess don’t take for granted that we not working. But if you serve in the population at KIPP, there’s no way you can’t think we not working. So, that’s it on that one.
Aaron Henkin:
I’m going to let you go in just a minute, but let me just finish with this. If you think about who you were 25 years ago, when you started into this line of work, and who you are today, how do you think this job has changed you as a person?
Wanda Moore:
Hmm. That’s a pretty good question. I always thought when you much younger, you always want to know how you’re going to be when you become a certain age. For some reason, I thought I was going to be different, but I’m the same person. So of course you grow in age, but I feel like that’s just wiser. You get wiser. So, but you still become who you… You still who you are. So I really haven’t changed. So this is it.
Aaron Henkin:
One more. I promise this will be the last one. Tell me what’s your least favorite part of the job, the part of the job that gives you the biggest headache, and what’s your most favorite part of the job? The part of the job that makes it feel like it’s all worthwhile.
Wanda Moore:
Got to really think of my least favorite.
Wanda Moore:
Oh, that’s a good question. My least favorite, I would say probably paperwork. Yes, paperwork. And sometime we just, as managers, we like to be more on the floor. Seeing what’s going on, interacting with your staff and the students as well. And sometimes you can have a lot of paperwork. So what I love about the job, I love the job because working with your staff members and getting to know the kids, you start becoming a family.
Wanda Moore:
Because you more on your job more than you home, seem like. So this is your second home. So you get to know your employees and the staff members at the school, and they become your family. Your family and your friends. And that’s what I love about it. You get to meet new people no matter what.