Julie's Journey #16 - Why Students Should Be Allowed to Pick Their Own Lunch Seats

Have you ever went to school on the first day and forgot how many rules there were over summer? Well, at the beginning of the year, all you want to do is reunite with your friends and try to ease your way back into the routine of waking up early and taking hard standardized tests. In almost all your classes on the first day, you have assigned seating arrangements. The whole day you are learning and learning and learning! You never really have any free time until lunch. However, at lunch, I am sure everyone wants freedom from all the learning they were doing during the day. And guess what? The school takes that away from you too! Lunch is the one period that we should have to relax and have the freedom we deserve. To summarize this, I believe we should be able to pick our own lunch seats. This way we can have a bit of freedom in the middle of the day, so kind of like a break from all the learning we do.

First, teachers are always telling us what us to do, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but lunch should be our one “free” period and time to hang out with whom we want to hang out with. It also helps us practice discipline and self-control. The text in the article states, “By students choosing their seats, you encourage them to practice discipline and self-control.” Discipline and self-control mean more responsible students in the lunchroom or café.

Next, when the beginning of the school year rolls around, you wouldn’t know which students are best friends or enemies. The text states, “You could end up putting the wrong people next to each other causing more management issues that you would have otherwise.” Fights and arguments during lunch mean more behavioral issues you didn’t need in the first place.

Lastly, sitting at assigned seats can help prevent people from feeling left out and it will also prevent fights and/or arguments. The text states, “Making a seating chart may also prevent classroom management issues. You can separate students that tend to talk to one another. No fights and arguments equal a happy class.

In conclusion, letting students hang out with whom they want to hang out with at lunch is giving students a little more freedom during the school day after they have been learning and learning the whole day. Also, when you do seating arrangements, you might pair up enemies with each other and that'll cause major problems. And lastly, people won’t feel left out if you have assigned seats. This way they can sit with anyone and still make friends. So, you can fix this by bombarding your lunch monitor to allow you to pick your own lunch seats. Who knows, it may just fix every lunch problem there has ever been...

Citations:

Pros and Cons of Seating Arrangements
Pros and Cons of Assigned Seating
The Reasoning Behind Assigned Seating at Lunch

Hope you enjoyed today's blog! See you in my next post! Bye, everyone!

❤ - Julie Z.