Why Lunch Ladies Are Heroes

Jarrett J. Krosoczka gave an impacting Ted speech known as “Why Lunch Ladies Are Heroes”, to a TED audience in July of 2014. Jarrett Krosoczka, author and illustrator, decided to visit his old elementary school after publishing his first children’s book in 2001 to talk to the students about being an author and ended up running into his old lady. After bumping into his past lunch lady he realizes how much of a dedicated worker she was and becomes inspired to make sure everyone knows how hard lunch ladies work. Through his work Krosoczka writes a “Lunch Lady” book series and spreads awareness of just how much lunch ladies should be appreciated worldwide. Krosoczka does a fantastic job at engaging his audience with his strong structure of persuasion

and emotional appeal on why lunch ladies are heroes.
Throughout the speech Krosoczka uses pathos, which is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response to an impassioned plea or a convincing story.

The author develops the persuasion of logic in his speech by at first mentioning his personal experience with his old elementary school lunch lady and how it inspired him to write the “Lunch Lady” series. By mentioning his own personal experience it helped him relate with the audience. One example of when he used pathos in his speech was, “Well that chance encounter inspired my imagination, and I created the Lunch Lady graphic novel series, a series of comics about a lunch lady who uses her fish stick nunchucks to fight off evil cyborg substitutes, a school bus monster, and mutant mathletes, and the end of every book, they get the bad guy with their hair net, and they proclaim, “Justice is Served!”” (Krosoczka 1). This quote displays the use of pathos because he talks about how the interaction with his lunch lady inspired him to write the series and spread awareness about the importance of their work around the

world.
The author uses long and descriptive sentences during the speech to create a strong emotional tone.

He develops the tone by using a descriptive story of running into his past lunch lady and why lunch ladies are important. Krosoczka uses a strong emotional tone because he knows that people of the audience are most likely close to his age and also have kids. This has the audience thinking about how they also want their kids to have his relationship with the lunch lady and how to appreciate them. The writer of the speech, Krosoczka is a known author which causes him to come across as knowledgeable and also creates more persuasiveness to the argument.
As a way to arrange his ideas the author organized his speech from least important to most important. Such as talking about his old lunch lady to creating a fiction book series involving heroic lunch ladies. By using this arrangement it allowed Krosoczka to keep his speech moving forward and come together towards the end. The structure also kept the reader engaged and understanding of how his story came to be. It is also meaningful to the audience because the author talks about an experience from his past and how it inspired him to achieve something

great.
The content of Krosoczka’s speech contains informal language while discussing an important topic. It is informal because he talks to the audience personally in first and second person. However, his speech still remains informational and serious which gives the audience the chance to relate and truly understand what he is stating. Within his speech the author also assumes that the audience knows certain terms such as, “and mutant athletes” (Krosoczka 1). This example shows that Krosoczka estimates that the audience understands the term “mutants” and chooses not to define it. The author chose to use and informal but informational diction to give himself a better chance of similarities within the audience.
Within the author’s speech of relating to the audience by mentioning that everyone has a lunch lady, he faces the fault of forgetting that not everybody had a lunch lady and do not have similar experiences. This fault counters his use of pathos because some of the audience cannot understand his perspective. For example some people had to go to school with cold lunches or could possibly not afford to be served hot lunch which would cause them to have a different idea of lunch ladies. Although the author fails to relate with the whole audience, he does manage to relate to most of them because of his past experience. This makes his argument stronger because he did have topic that most experienced themselves as well. One of his strong examples was when he talked about how lunch ladies around the globe feed their children. “They’re feeding our children every single day, and before a child can learn, their belly needs to be full, and these women and men are working on the front lines to create an educated society” (Krosoczka 2). This example demonstrates Krosoczka’s strength because of his relation with the crowd. As an author, Krosoczka already has the respect of many which makes it easier in the use of persuasion. Lastly, he establishes common ground with the crowd with his experience of lunch ladies and adds to the persuasion of his speech due to the fact that mostly everyone can relate.
Through Krosoczka’s well built persuasion structure and emotional appeal he engages with the audience and persuades them that lunch ladies are true heroes. As a whole, the effectiveness of the essay is really important and inspiring because it has people realize just how important lunch ladies truly are and we should most definitely cherish them. Krosoczka archives the purpose of the speech extremely well because he has his own story that encouraged him to write a series about heroic lunch ladies and his idea touched the lives of many. His appeal to the audience is his maturity and his similar idea of lunch ladies. Last but not least, the author’s ability to persuade is incredibly strong because of his knowledge as an author and ability to establish common ground with the people of the audience.