There are many things that make being a teacher one of the hardest jobs in the world.
But I truly don’t believe any of them are as bad as lunch duty.
Let me set the scene: You have already spent your morning attempting to give your best self to your students, showing up with a smile, asking about their weekend and how their families are doing, and treating every minute concern and worry they bring to your attention as if it is the most important thing in YOUR world at that moment. By midday, though, your patience has begun to wear thin. Your coffee was spilled. Your lesson plan you spent six hours perfecting got interrupted by a fire drill. And a child ran out of your class because the person she likes checked “no” on the infamous “Will you go out with me?” letter (yes, in 2020 students still pass these letters in class).
The LAST thing you then want to go do is spend 20 minutes in a cafeteria with triple the number of students, all of whom have lost all sense of reason and common sense because it is the first time in the day where they don’t have to sit and process information. And it is loud. VERY LOUD. I haven’t read the science on it, but I am sure that adolescents who are sitting directly near each other cannot hear one another unless they scream at a fever pitch.
The only way to survive is to take deep breaths and keep your eye on the clock. Keep telling yourself, “It’s only 20 minutes...it’s only 20 minutes.”
The pain of lunch duty is felt by many an educator. Some schools have even gone as far as to institute “silent lunch.” Silent lunch is when children, from as young as six to as old as 14 (I have yet to hear of a high school attempting this) come into the cafeteria, grab their food, sit in front of their peers and...eat.
There is no talking. There is no laughing. There is only chewing.
I have worked in schools like this in the past, to the point where I figured it was just a new norm that, like “new math,” had been instituted after I left primary school. But then one year I interned at a private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I saw that the children didn’t have silent lunch there. They didn’t even have to be silent in the hallways. They weren’t even walking in lines!
Did it look chaotic? Yes. Did the teachers look like they wanted to pull out their hair? No, not really. Did the kids seem happy? Absolutely.
As a school administrator, I am constantly thinking about norms and routines and all the ways in which we can keep our students and teachers safe and happy. But as I continue to reflect on my work now, I have begun to wonder: who
is truly benefiting from rules like “silent hallways” and “silent lunch”? And why is it that this rule is so commonplace in schools like mine that teach predominantly Black and Brown students, but nonexistent in schools that don’t?
I've had to take a step back and realize that as an educator I have been conditioned to feel comfortable policing the bodies and voices of Black and Brown children. When we are too loud, we are seen as threatening, even when we are simply laughing and enjoying our time with loved ones. When we are loud we are seen as aggressive instead of passionate. When we are loud we are seen as dangerous, and therefore it is better to keep us silent so that others around us can feel “comfortable.”
And it’s not just white people who feel this way. Black people feel it too. I feel it when I am on a subway train and the children are screaming at the top of their lungs, I feel it when I can hear young people laughing and yelling outside my apartment window. “They’re being rude” I would say to myself. “Why can’t they just live their joy more quietly?” I have also been on the other end of it as well. While sitting at a table with friends during brunch, we were asked by a waiter to “keep our voices down.” A table of eight, well-educated, gainfully employed young Black people were asked to quiet down. Clearly we are more palatable when we are quiet and calm.
Now one could easily argue that a group of loud, white teenagers is just as annoying as a group of loud Black teens. However, one group is being judged as “just being kids,” while the other is being seen as a potential threat.
At this point, I don’t know the next time I will be in a cafeteria with 170+ adolescents yelling, talking with food falling from their mouths and bumping me as they rush to the food line (God I miss being with my students!); but, I do know I will never again be in support of silent lunch or silent hallways. Our children grow and learn from speaking, and they deserve to use their voices. Our bodies are policed enough in society. School should be a place where they are able to be free.
As an educator, I can live with a student telling me that I helped her to communicate and advocate effectively. What I can’t live with is her telling me that I liked it better when the students were seen and not heard.
Great Read!
When I worked at a private school on the Upper East Side, I had a very similar reflection. Lunch and hallways were never silent. And yes, it felt chaotic but children were happy so it made me sad knowing that our black and brown students are sometimes not given those same opportunities in other spaces where I’ve worked. Taking away recess or gym as a response to misbehavior was also greatly shunned at the private school but a norm in other places. Thank you for sharing that reflection and for your commitment to questioning such practices!