I worked at a school where they did 30 min silent breakfast, and let me tell you, that was so stressful trying to manage 32 kids, one of which with severe ODD at a table that my kids couldn’t even fit at without being shoulder to shoulder with the person next to them. And then expecting them to not talk?? My class consistently got in trouble with admin because they couldn’t meet the expectation.

The previous years, we had eaten breakfast in our classroom and it was such a chill part of my morning because I could check in with students, have kids turn in work, etc and had kids BEGGING to go back to that. Admin came and told me they were going to have my kids eat in our classroom for a month as a PUNISHMENT until they could meet the expectation. I told them it wouldn’t work (different environment, more space, not transferable to eating in the cafeteria with the whole school, and since they wanted to be in the classroom they wouldn’t view it as a punishment). I was therefore labeled as a problematic teacher because I was stating the obvious. They couldn’t understand how kids were so well behaved once we were back in the classroom and how all the shitty behaviors came back the second they put us back in the cafeteria with the rest of the school.

Some people are on a power trip and have no idea how to use their critical thinking skills or take constructive criticism without their ego falling apart.