Reply to Assigned seats for elementary school lunch?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Cut loose at lunch time?!! Have you been in the school,cafeteria at lunch time when the entire place is "cut loose"? Don't get me wrong, it should not be a silent lunch. Kids need to talk. They don't need to be yelling to kids at other tables or shouting out. Cafeteria management begins with set norms for the entire school of expectations that are then reinforced by the classroom teachers. I don't mean by the teachers themselves in the cafeteria, they need their break, but by class rules and norms that have been set into place ahead of time. I have seen assigned seats on occasion, as needed per class. Class discussions on this should be occurring. Management still needs to occur so students can talk, not be "cut loose".  
 
 
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[b]Agree.  And, remember, in lots of schools lunch is very short and if the kids talk too much, they don't eat.  It can be a true circus if allowed to get out of control[/b].[/quote]

I agree 100% with this.  We have assigned seats when necessary.  When they're too loud (yelling over each other, etc) they aren't sitting down, or aren't eating.  Assigned seats for a few days and a tighter lid on the "cutting loose" does the trick.  When they get a grip on it they can go back to choosing their own spot.

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It's absolutely correct that in cafeterias where kids are "cutting loose," lunch does not get eaten, and the result is that everyone pays a price for that after lunchtime -- the kids, because their attention flags and they're focused on the fact they're hungry and grumpy; and the teachers, because they have to try to get the flagging attention of hungry, grumpy kids. I wonder if the OP has ever sat through a whole lunchtime at a school where kids were allowed to cut loose? If he or she had done so, then it would be obvious how much food is wasted, how little gets eaten by many kids, and how insanely loud a cafeteria can become.

Kids DO need to socialize during lunch and talk, but there has to be a clear expectation of reasonable volume and good behavior just as in a classroom. Our elementary school had assigned seating only by class -- each class had certain tables it had to use, but kids could sit anywhere they liked at those specific tables. Totally silent lunch was only instituted a very, very few times in all the years of elementary for my daughter (now in MS) and only when someone had gotten totally wild such as throwing something, or a whole class was being so obnoxiously loud that the lunchroom attendants shut it all down for the rest of that one lunchtime. Never was silent lunch a regular thing-- it was only brought out as a rare discipline. As for some kids paying the price for a few kids' acting up -- welcome to the real world.

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