Reply to Assigned seats for elementary school lunch?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I worked as a lunch helper at a public school with assigned seats. It doesn't mean that kids who are normally excluded are suddenly included. What happens is they are ignored at whatever table they are at (at best) OR they are ostracized and bullied when nobody is paying attention. I had no say in where the kids sat, but if I became aware of somebody being rude to any student, I came down hard on that student. Spoke to them privately, made them write their name down and gave it to the teacher and told the teacher to find out why this student wrote their name down. Then I watched those students more closely and made sure to engage the student who was bullied/picked on to make sure they were comfortable speaking up for themselves. I also let students who were good help me which they really enjoyed. The ones who seemed to have less friends, I'd let them choose a buddy to be their helper. [/quote]

You are as rare as a unicorn, my friend. You sound like you were an awesome monitor. I think the reason we are moving to these draconian measures the the sad reality that in many, many instances the quality of lunch room monitor is very low. I've watched these employees. They have absolutely no skill in room management, working with kids, etc. They have one method of dealing with issues--yelling, followed swiftly by punishments that are placed on an entire table, regardless of what children might have actually been responsible for an infraction.

I know teachers need their own breaks and lunchtimes, but I think it would be so helpful if schools could find a way for the teachers and lunch monitors to meet and actually work together. I'm not saying every day or every week. Maybe just a few targeted meetings a year, where teachers could give lunch monitors a "heads up" about certain kids/behaviors to watch for.

I just feel that there are probably SOME kids that might need and assigned seat, or SOME kids that might need some more interventions, but as others have pointed out, the majority of kids just want to have some time to talk with there buddies, and I don't see why that should be a problem.[/quote]

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