Challenging Times for Elementary Schools
How must we deal with poor, objectionable behavior?
Adopt a policy of ‘distant vigilance’ with the naughty ones, instead spending most of their time loudly and positively rewarding good behavior
The Lunch Room Supervisor shares his views about Elementary Schools of USA
Nazarul Islam | USA
The proverbial Lunch Room Supervisor (which I am, at a prestigious Elementary School in Illinois) provides assistance and supervision for children during lunch and/or assigned recesses to ensure a positive and safe environment.
A co-worker had once cautioned that lunch ladies always seem to be grouchy or weird. I chuckled. I disagreed, because I have really not come across someone who fits the description. While I would dispute the premise of the question, I can offer a suggestion as to why it might be the case.
Being a lunchtime supervisor is a very responsible job and certainly not easy. It is difficult to keep an eye on a hundred or more children, who are wandering freely around the playground, and make sure that they are not doing something that could lead to an accident; it is much easier in a confined space.
A Lunchroom Supervisor may be required to organize activities, provide first aid, mediate in disputes, and console ‘upset’ children. It is often a challenge to hold a meaningful conversation with one child, while making sure that another, at the other side of the playground, isn’t going to run into someone because he or she is not looking where they are going.
We do all this and more, for an agreed wage and very little, if any, training.
Large numbers of children ‘letting off steam’ at lunchtime, lots of food to be served and eaten in a very short time and children running around in an outside space which is not meeting their individual play needs will all too often lead to fallings out, avoidable bumps and scrapes, boredom and poor digestion.
So, what can Lunchtime Supervisors do to manage this stressful scenario, ensure undesired incidents are reduced and avoid teachers and school leaders spending precious time sorting disputes out during the afternoon, when the children should all be back in their ‘learning mode’?
Well, these are challenging questions for a quite few reasons.
- This is supposed to be children’s free time but some of them perceive (wrongly) that because it’s their free time they can, as one school counselor had shared to me recently, “do what they want”. And who can blame them? In the classroom there is likely to be a consequence for arguing or throwing pens and books on the floor but in many schools if children throw cutlery in the bin or throw food on the floor in the dining room they will often get away with it!
- Many Lunchtime Supervisors are seniors, who are parents or grandparents. I like to enjoy good relationship with the school children that would also result in them ‘befriending’ them during lunchtime, rather than acting as counsellors, health promoters and ‘play workers’.
The only fallout is that it could also undermine our authority in the eyes of many children, and make it much harder to garner respect, and further more manage negative behavior even-handedly.
- Most Lunchtime Supervisors, including those who are Teaching Assistants, aren’t trained teachers or qualified ‘play workers’ and therefore may not have the requisite skills, knowledge and expertise to manage behavior. As a consequence, lunchtimes can often become very challenging, scary, stressful and unnecessarily noisy for pupils and staff alike.
All this may often result in children rushing their meal so they can get to the few fun activities on offer in the playground before anyone else. It’s likely they will then go back to afternoon lessons with a feeling of disappointment, frustration, boredom and unhappiness, often still arguing about various lunchtime incidents.
Therefore it is more than likely that to immediately compromise the school’s learning outcomes, which should be a serious concern for school Authorities—because it’s likely to negatively affect children’s progress and attainment.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be like this! In my previous jobs, I have observed Lunchtime Supervisor for many years. Perhaps our responses could help to ensure that school Principal, Assistant Principal and teachers may not have to spend time in the afternoon addressing such unpleasant issues on a daily basis.
Where I’ve been serving in the past, school children had all listened to and respected their Lunchtime Supervisors and they went back into afternoon classes refreshed and ready to learn.
In my humble opinion this is what good Lunchtime Supervisors need to do to ensure all children behave well in the dining room and playground. This is based on my evidence based best practice I have developed over the last twelve years.
The question is….What is the role of Lunch room Supervisors?
Most Lunchtime Supervisors think their role is about cleaning and policing poor behavior. I have identified nine different Supervisor roles and yes, this does include some cleaning and policing.
However, Lunchtime Supervisors shouldn’t default to these roles. If lunchtimes are run well, these issues just won’t arise but if Lunchtime Supervisors spend too much time assisting in cleaning, then children will perceive us as cleaners.
School children won’t perceive that Lunchtime Supervisors have a role to play in managing their behavior. Similarly, if Lunchtime Supervisors spend too much time telling children off, they will shy away from having interesting and positive conversations with them.
Most of our good Lunchtime Supervisors recognize that their primary role is to be a teacher of the so called “soft skills” – (which should really be called ‘hard skills’ in my opinion) such as helping children to use a knife and fork (very poor in most schools), explaining why it’s important to eat a healthy diet, encouraging children to take responsibility, facilitating and introducing children to new games and resources for free play, and making sure that children are aware that we all make mistakes and we can learn from them.
It’s important therefore that the aspiration of being a “teacher” in this context is reinforced in their job specification. So what about the need to clean and police poor behavior? In good schools most of the cleaning is done by pupil advocates who enjoy the role and privilege of being a waitresses or waiter (provided uniforms and rewards are linked to this).
Once Lunchtime Supervisors start engaging with children in a more positive way the need to police should only be necessary occasionally
Do we Lunch time Supervisors really understand the behavior policy?
I like to ask my colleagues at work, whether they know their school rules, which are usually on display in classrooms and corridors. I am sure almost all of them would struggle to remember all of them!
So here emerges a major problem. If children know that Lunchtime Supervisors don’t know the rules, then they won’t be able to manage behavior effectively. All Lunchtime Supervisors need to memories all school rules so they can praise children for following them, or check and correct them, if they aren’t.
Displaying them on laminated cards attached to lanyards is a great way to make sure the children know all Lunchtime Supervisors know the school rules.
Next, I would like to ask—how do we reward good behavior in school Cafeteria?
Every school has a very small minority of children who will persistently and consistently behave badly. Lots of effort, time and resource is spent on this minority, ensuring their behavior improves.
And if it does, they get rewarded! Not surprisingly, Lunchtime Supervisors are constantly keeping an eye on this naughty minority at lunchtime and are constantly having to raise their voice to police poor behavior. What about the vast majority of children that are persistently and consistently well-behaved but who don’t get rewarded as much as those who are naughty?
One Lunchtime Supervisor I worked with overseas had shared she knew of a school that were taking the naughty children to Alton Towers because their behavior had improved! The message it sends out to those who are always well-behaved is “maybe I should start being naughty too, so I can go to Alton Towers”.
Rather than constantly focusing on and making a great fuss of the naughty children, Lunchtime Supervisors need to focus on making a great fuss of the children that are well-behaved. As one school teacher shared with me recently, Lunchtime Supervisors need to adopt a policy of ‘distant vigilance’ with the naughty ones, instead spending most of their time loudly and positively rewarding good behavior.
So if you happen to be a Lunchtime Supervisor, don’t go rushing across to the naughty child immediately. Give them some space and time and only intervene when their behavior becomes totally unacceptable. As a result, children will start to overhear and be encouraged by the positive conversations and the rewards that they get.
The more rewards that Lunchtime Supervisors can give out, the better lunchtime behavior will become, and if they can be linked to the classroom reward system, better still.
If classroom teachers send postcards home when children perform well in class, then Lunchtime Supervisors may also be permitted to send postcards home when they do something at lunchtime which is kind, polite or respectful.
Again, how must we deal with poor, objectionable behavior? What you say and how you say it will determine whether or not a child is going to listen and do what you want them to do. If a child is running it’s a very easy to say “stop running” or if a child is arguing, to say “stop arguing with me”.
These responses aren’t helpful even if the child does stop what they are doing. It might make them feel guilty and it doesn’t give them a learning outcome. Good Lunchtime Supervisors need to focus on what they want a child to start doing, rather than stop doing.
So if they are arguing with you, your response should be “talk to me I am listening”, or “speak to me quietly. Thank you”. These are non-emotive, fair and acceptable requests with a clear outcome.
We cannot avoid incidents taking place in Recess Playground or the Cafeteria. How do we de-escalate unwelcome incidents? If children start to fall out and get upset at lunchtime it is critical that Lunchtime Supervisors know how to quickly de-escalate the incident. If a situation is allowed to escalate, other children will start watching, listening in and learning, which we certainly don’t want.
Suddenly their focus will be on behaving poorly, rather than on behaving positively. If a Lunchtime Supervisor intervenes when, for example, a child is seen throwing food, the child is most likely to say something like “but it wasn’t just me, loads of other children were throwing food too”.
Many Lunchtime Supervisors whom I have observed may tend to make a difficult situation even worse, by focusing on the child’s response, rather than shifting the focus away from it. They are likely to do this usually by escalating the incident even further with a debate about ‘who did what’.
Good Lunchtime Supervisors will most likely focus on the first behavior – i.e. throwing food, and not the second behavior, which is the child’s response. To help Lunchtime Supervisors de-escalate the incident, before the need to involve school leaders, I have developed a three-tiered approach.
This allows a child three opportunities to improve their behavior and learn a valuable lesson from the experience.
Agreeing or partially agreeing will get the child to listen. So you agree that other children may have been throwing food but you saw them throwing food. Let them know that if you see anyone else throwing food you will talk to them too.
What choices do we Supervisors have?
If the child doesn’t calm down, then the next step is to remind them they are breaking one of the school rules that everyone has to follow.
Final strategy before involving school leaders is to give children a choice. Either they will make the right choice, and start behaving appropriately, or they will make the wrong choice. If that happens, there will be a serious consequence. These choices are fair, reasonable and not threatening.
Can we assess success criteria? Good Lunchtime Supervisors can’t create outstanding lunchtime provision on their own.
They need to make sure their school embraces the following three success criteria.
- School teachers recognize that lunchtime has a direct impact on progress and attainment and should therefore be included in their School Development Plan.
- What should be our approach?
-Engage and involve the whole school community when introducing any change to lunchtime so everyone can have their say. This includes caterers, parents, children, teaching staff, support staff and Lunchtime Supervisors.
- Listening to the customer-/Lunchtime is children’s social time so it’s really important that we listen to what they want and what they care about.
If schools embrace these success criteria and the evidence based strategies detailed in this article then behavior will most likely improve, Lunchtime Supervisors will feel respected and valued and children will go back into class ready for learning.
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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.
