In general, Americans love food. The typical American gets the opportunity to eat at least three meals a day. Middle school students typically eat one or two of their daily meals at school. However, many students still get hungry between and after meals, therefore leading them to be distracted at times. Ola Middle School currently has a rule prohibiting eating in the classroom. This decision seems a bit harsh considering the benefits of allowing small snacks in addition to the main meals a student may eat. Allowing eating in the classroom gives students energy, improves the learning atmosphere of the classroom around lunchtime, and keeps students responsible.
The average middle school student gets roughly seven to eight hours of sleep per night. Studies have shown that these same students should probably get closer to nine or ten hours of solid sleep. This is a rarity in a middle school situation. In addition to not getting much sleep, many students do not eat breakfast in the morning. Those that do may not get a breakfast that is well balanced and nutritional. These factors lead to one very unfortunate situation: Students are generally very lethargic during class and unable to take in information as they should. Eating healthy snacks in class can help students to have more energy and be more focused. Due to this, teachers would no longer need to listen to the excuses of hunger and lack of sleep as reasons for not doing work. Even if a student only gets a few hours of sleep one night, snacks rich in protein such as nuts can help boost their brain power tremendously. Though small snacks would not allow the average teenager to do intense manual labor on little sleep, these snacks can definitely help in getting some new concepts planted into the brain. This would also help the teacher to be more optimistic. As the cliché goes, "attitude is contagious." A teacher with a room full of students that are far from attentive would have a lot more trouble teaching an engaging lesson than a teacher with a room full of students awake and ready to learn.
For many teachers, their class period around lunch time is one of their worst behaved. In the time leading up to lunch, students' minds become fully focused on getting food for the first time that day. A palpable trend that has emerged is teachers not doing much of anything ten to fifteen minutes before class. Precious educational time is lost due to hunger. If eating snacks in the classroom were to be allowed would no longer be near as hungry right before lunch. Sure the suspense would not vanish as students would still be more than ready to talk with their friends or have some ice cream, but in general the teachers should be able to get work done before lunchtime. After lunch, students would theoretically be ready to again increase their knowledge as the lunchtime break would no longer be quite as big of a deal. With no eating allowed in the classroom, students see lunchtime as the highlight of their day. Students would be able to appreciate the day as a whole even more than ever before if this rule were to be revoked.
One of the key aspects to making certain that eating in the classroom turns out to be a good thing is to impose regulations that would ensure everything would go smoothly. For instance, one of the worst fears of those who oppose eating in the classroom is extra work for the janitorial staff at the school. A way to prevent this would be to give in school suspension or another form of punishment to anyone who was found to have food or food wrappers in or around their desk. Additionally, teachers may be concerned that eating during class could disrupt their lessons. An easy way to prevent this would be to only allow eating during certain times. This could vary from classroom to classroom, but a universal rule the administrators at the school could establish would be to allow eating snacks during the first and last five minutes of class only. During this time, students would likely be doing some sort of warm-up, or in the case of during the end of class, studying for a test. If these type rules were to become less strict or less enforced, eating in the classroom could quickly become out of hand.
With more strict regulations, students would be forced to become more responsible. As mentioned earlier, if any snacks or wrappers were to be found around a student's desk, they would personally get chastised. Enforcing this would mean that all students would be responsible for theirs as well as others' trash. Slowly, classrooms would stay cleaner and cleaner. The custodial staff would no longer have near as much work to do. Also, without some of the excuses of being tired and hungry, students would be forced to pay better attention in class. Students would be held to a much higher standard over time. No longer would students be able to get out of not doing homework as easily. These factors could eventually lead to higher test scores and cleaner classrooms. The administrators would be much more pleased at the school.
While at first thought not allowing eating in the classroom looks like an excellent way to keep a cleaner school and more attentive students, this may not be the case. In fact, if the correct rules were to be applied to the situation, just the opposite could turn out to be true. Small snacks during classroom in time contributes to better behavior and more attentive and responsible students. Cleaner classrooms even have the possibility of deriving from ridding of the rule. Though the implementation should be careful and rather strict, eating in the classroom is an excellent solution to many problems, whether or not they are often considered. Many classroom rules at Ola Middle School may need to be reconsidered. This may be crucial for a better education for all students.