Reply to Assigned seats for elementary school lunch?

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[quote=Anonymous][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]

Thank you pp! I love working with kids and took great pride in my job, even though i was just a lunch lady lol. I had one other girl working with me and she had terrible classroom management skills. She yelled at students, punished, threatened, and had no sense of trying to understand the students point of view. She only seemed to care about asserting her authority over the students and nobody really respected her for it. She was also very inconsistent and inappropriate at times.

One of the problems with a job as a lunchroom monitor is that your hours are in the middle of the day when lunch is served. I worked for about 2.5 hours a day (small school). And the pay was less that $10 an hour, so for many people, it's not really worth it to work for so low and have your schedule disrupted for those hours. Another problem is the noise and behavior. A lot of people can't handle it and don't last long at the job.

There was no training required for my job, I only needed to pass a background check which I paid for out of pocket (which also might deter people from wanting this job!). The first couple weeks were really hard because the older kids were really mean to me and trying to put me to the test and see what they could get away with. My coworker told me I should yell and punish them to let them know I won't put up with it. And the younger kids all wanted to get my attention because I was new. But once I got to know the students it got a lot easier and I never resorted to yelling at anyone. The point is, if the lunch monitors had any training about classroom management and behavior intervention, it would probably help a lot. I'm naturally good with kids and I majored in elementary education in college, so I was better prepared than many others who would take a job like this.

And yes, some students would do better sitting in an assigned seat. They need more structure and we need to know where they are at all times so we can keep an eye on them. 
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