Eating in class. Students see and do it all the time with kids pulling out little snacks in class or eating smaller parts of their lunch. While this does not cause much of a distraction most of the time, some students have started to go off the rails and abuse the privilege.
When a teacher allows this rule, the intention is to encourage students to bring small snacks to eat in class. Maybe even sometimes, it is a little bigger and happens to be the last half of breakfast or lunch.
“Sometimes I bring in things like a bagel for my breakfast and eat it in my first period, but it is usually smaller things I see students bring in,” Natausha Hollis said.
While it is nice being able to eat in class, some students have started to abuse the privilege and bring full-course meals.
For example, there is a kid in my first-period class who always brings two gallons of sweet tea, little debbie sweets, and candy almost everyday. Occasionally, he brings donuts, and most of the time, he also has two monsters.
He also eats and drinks all of this in his first and second period, and it becomes very distracting. The sound of wrappers constantly crinkling and the gulping of drinks makes it hard for the class to learn or even pay attention.
“It is very hard to listen in my first period when all I can hear is cans crunching and wrappers constantly being opened up,” Hollis said.
When the sizes of these snacks get bigger and students start to get more comfortable with what they eat, it makes the class more distracting.
Not only are the sounds distracting, but so are the smells.
“I had a kid last year that brought chicken into the classroom after lunch, and it stunk up the whole class,” Branson Gurney said.
I can personally advocate for the smells causing a distraction because it can be hard to focus when your senses are telling you that something around you is bad or even making your mouth water.
I have had classes where students bring in their lunch, and it makes the class smell absolutely awful.
As much as I love San Francisco Sourdough, the way it stinks up a classroom makes me want to steer away from the place for a while.
During my sophomore year, my friends and I went and got sandwiches from there, and my friend who did not have time to eat his decided to put it in his lunch bag till his free sixth.
At first, it was alright, but once the smell started to slowly spread throughout the class, it got stronger and made the class stink so bad that we had to crack a window for the rest of the period.
“Eating in class usually doesn’t distract me often, but I do agree some students take it too far,” Gurney said.
Eating in class should not be an excessive meal or a buffet. A small snack or remains of a small breakfast or lunch is good to bring. When it starts to become too much to fit in your desk then there is a problem.
Not only are large food items and a huge bag of groceries distracting to everyone else, they are also distracting to the student who brings it.
Let’s be honest nobody is paying attention to the lesson when they are eating their lunch or trying to open huge boxes and excessive cans.
Having a huge meal in class also distracts you from being able to focus on your work.
This may not be the case for all, but for a wide majority it is.
Eating in class should be kept to a minimum amount of food and smaller drinks that can fit on the corner of a desk.
When the rule starts to become abused it affects all, even though it is something so small as just eating it still takes away from the learning process.
