With zero public school experience, I wasn’t naive enough to think it was exactly the same, but I thought it was probably close. Husband confirmed that. It wasn’t until high school that the different grades got mixed lunches there was a chance you weren’t with your friends.
Now, once you get out of elementary school, it’s the luck of the draw. As a person who was in education, I don’t understand this. As a mother, I don’t understand this. Middle school years are the toughest years for many reasons. There are so many changes taking place in kids’ bodies and brains. There are more social pressures and educational pressures added to those changes. Then, the school throws them to the wolves. Studies show that lunch is actually very stressful for students. “Who am I going to sit with?” For some, this list is long and it’s honestly tough to choose who to sit with. For others, the list is smaller, or even nonexistent.
My daughter and one of her best friends were so excited because they were on the same team this year (our school divides kids into teams, but it’s pretty much irrelevant to those in honors classes). They don’t have a single class together, including lunch. They were devastated. My daughter is in a better situation than her friend, though. My daughter knows a lot of people in her lunch block, including one of her other best friends. Her friend has no one she really knows well.
Up until 4 years ago, students had lunch with their grade levels. They changed this up so scheduling wouldn’t be so difficult. In middle school, there is a limited amount of “electives”. In fact, until this year, the “electives” were choir, orchestra, band, or general music. You had to pick one. This is the first year they have a “choice”... psychology or no psychology. So, I don’t buy the scheduling thing, especially now with teams. The truth is, mental health does not matter in this country.
The stress of lunch is a mental health issue. I know a child who is a year ahead of my son in school. Lunch was so stressful for him that he got a pass from his guidance counselor to go to the library instead of lunch. While I think it’s great that he had the option to do this, we took away this student’s time to eat because he was too worried to sit in a cafeteria with no friends. Administration states that there will always be kids they know in their lunch blocks. Kids they know aren’t always their friends. Sometimes, it’s the “kids they know” that are the problem. Yes, they need to learn to branch out. Yes, they will not always be with their best friends, yet, this is a problem that can be avoided for as long as possible. The counselor’s at Sunshine’s school are trying to do something about this by sending out emails to National Junior Honor Society members to have them look out for kids sitting alone and either ask them to join them at lunch or tell her and she will find a table for them. Still, that’s a lot of pressure to put on middle school kids.
Our society puts way too much pressure on kids and refuses to address their mental health. I don’t know the right answer. I don’t know how to fix the problem. I do know that something has to change, for the sake of our children and our future.