Imagine you are sitting in class, the clock is slowly ticking, your hands are shaking while clenching your pencil, and your eyes cannot focus on one thing. Hot sweat drips from your forehead, your stomach rumbles, it’s empty. You are so distracted because all you can think about is eating. By the time lunch finally arrives, you only have about 15 minutes to eat. This is how it feels not being able to eat in classrooms.
To begin, when you’re comfortably full, your eyes are focused, your stomach is filled, and your energy increases. “Eating in class can also help build social skills and a sense of community in the classroom” (lafayettetimes.org). Although eating in class can be messy, it’s beneficial to students because we don’t have enough time to eat when lunch finally comes, and it increases our attention and energy.
Students should be able to eat in class because it can be very helpful for people who are trying their best to listen in starving situations like these. Seventh grade students, Erik Aquilino, James Harrison and Ella Tanki simply say, “Why not.”
This proves that some students don’t seem to see a problem with it. Do teachers?
Mr Zachary Crutcher, our current eighth grade math teacher stated, “Being hungry can be even more distracting than eating in class itself.”
Mrs. Tamara Zuckerman, eighth grade science teacher said, “Eating a small non-messy allergy-free snack in class is harmless and can actually be beneficial towards focusing and learning especially right before lunch and after a long day of working.”
The quote from Lafayette Times says, “Eating in class may also help students with concentration. Some students may get hungry in class, making it nearly impossible to concentrate on a lesson. Snacking allows students to quench their hunger and boost their focus” ( Coenders).
To add on, most sixth grade students are used to being able to snack in school. Tyler Rabenold, sixth grade student said, “Especially back in elementary school, we used to have snack time. Now we have to change our eating schedule.”
Another sixth grade student, Leah Giarrusso claimed, “Back in Boston where I used to live, I used to be able to eat in class during most lessons. It was very helpful, and I was never distracted by my own food or others around me.”
Another reason we should be able to eat in class is because students do not have enough time to eat their whole lunch. The Lafayette Times agrees that lunch time is very limited: “Lunch time is a meager 25 minutes, not accounting for the time it takes to get to and from the cafeteria. This either does not give students enough time to have a nourishing meal or forces students to gobble their food, both of which are very unhealthy. However, eating in class gives students extra time to eat, helping them eat right” ( Coenders ).
At EIS not only do we have 20 minutes for lunch, which also includes cleaning up, it is also very hard to eat if you buy lunch. As a sixth grader student, Ellyette Roger claimed, “We barely have enough time to eat as it is, when buying lunch you just have less and less time due to the long lines.”
Domenick Pasceri, head of the EIS cafeteria agreed, “You guys do not have enough time to eat. I used to have so much more time to eat. Twenty minutes is not a long enough time to eat.”
Furthermore, students already have to wake up early and some walk to school, they don’t have enough time to eat breakfast and limited time in school for lunch. So snacks are very important for students. Eighth grade students Mallory Correa and Gaby Castellanos said, “Some people don’t even have enough time to eat breakfast before school.”
Another eighth grade student at EIS, Ava Mandel followed up, “That means eighth graders have to wait almost four hours to eat lunch. If you even get any food in you in the short amount of time there is to eat.”
Sixth grade students River, Javid, and Ella Mirsky said, “Eating in class helps because if you miss breakfast then you can fill your stomach with little snacks in class. It is not worth waiting until lunch just to eat.”
In all, most students agree that we should be allowed to eat in class because we don’t have enough time during lunch and it helps benefit our focus.
