The Lunchroom
People who work in lunchrooms should be paid a lot of money. I stayed in the lunchroom for 3 lunch periods today, monitoring the famous Mix It Up Day. In that loud space, you never know when someone's going to start slamming a thermos into the table over and over again or throwing half a sandwich at someone nearby. Anything can happen. I say KUDOS to the lunchroom monitors. They were extremely cheerful and helpful even though the whole cafeteria routine was thrown akilter. The school seemed to like Mix It Up. Third lunch was a hard sell, but the first two chatted happily together and answered the ice breaker questions the sixers had written, questions like, "Have you ever been grounded and what for?" and "Would you rather jump out of a plane or walk across hot coals? Explain."During third lunch, I heard a kid say, "This Mix It Up day is crap."
I told him, "Mix It Up is not crap. And even if it were crap, you shouldn't say it's crap. Now, be honest. You're enjoying Mix It Up, aren't you?"
"It's okay," he replied sullenly.
I didn't want to push my luck, so I took that as an enthusiastic endorsement of the sixers' project and wandered off to discuss the new Potter movie with kids at the next table.
Comments
No one could pay enough extra money to do lunchroom patrol. In a couple of the schools I taught in, it was a teacher duty. In my favorite school, they paid others to do it. What a relief that was. One can lose his/her sanity in all that noise.
mary
my feet will heal but I would certainly die if the plane was flying at the time I jumped. Seems obvious. I must not have understood the question. -Bob
i'm down in georgia, visiting the fam.
c...it was amazingly loud in there. it has the feel of a time bomb to it too. i have often wondered, ms. morris, how much redesign would help the situation. mitzi and i wrote a paper about the lunchroom that is in a journal this month. i'll send it your way when i get home.
and jm, thanks for visiting. i went to a quilt show in town and snapped away. collecting blog imagery is one of my top priorities these days.
bob b., i told them to make the questions unique and i guess theydid. in a way.
michael, love your new blog and have already clicked away there. well done my friend!
shef and i miss the blog.