by Michaela O’Donnell ‘13

From 10:58 to 11:34, students are expected to eat lunch, come in to retake or make-up tests and quizzes, and meet for review sessions and club meetings. Although Sherwood’s lunch time is full of freedom and students are given the chance to choose how to spend their time, it has become an expectation that students utilize every minute. Consciously or unconsciously, the student body regards lunch as another class period. Montgomery County has even given lunch a period number.

In order to be more productive, the human mind needs to have downtime to rejuvenate and re-focus. Failure to take breaks can even result in exhaustion and anxiety. The best way to achieve this is by taking walks to clear one’s mind after sitting all day and having a snack or eating lunch. This will recharge the mind and body for the rest of the day. Not many students have the time to take a walk outside or even eat a nutritional lunch without worrying about when they have to go in for a teacher or a meeting. Worrying about the rest of the day on top of having no time for the mind to rest means there is a significant change in one’s mood and motivation to finish the day.

As a solution, an allotted time separate from lunch should be set aside for teachers and students to meet. Similar to a study hall in terms of the objective, this class break, treated as a class period, will have more freedom for where students are allowed to go and put more responsibility on the student to make up anything missed. This will also cut down on the excuses from both students and teachers for why they were not able to make it in for lunch.

Although there is the issue of monitoring students during this free time, the solution would be to treat it as a class period. There would be a classroom and teacher assigned to each student. The teacher would then sign passes to any other teacher that the student needed to see. In the hallways, similarly to lunch time, security guards would be in charge of regulating the halls. Having a study hall or meeting time of 30 minutes in between two class periods in the first half of the day would give students enough time to re-take quizzes or make-up presentations. By shortening lunch 10 minutes, there is a separation in breaks to guarantee a proper rest time.

Teachers would also benefit from this solution the same, if not more, than students would. Students are constantly coming in and out of their classrooms during lunch and they are at risk for the same amount of stress and exhaustion because of it. Although the school day cannot fit in another full class period, this small period will help dwindle down the number of students coming in for lunch and therefore allow both students and teachers to enjoy a proper lunch break.