Students need to be supervised at all times

Even shortening the lunch hour without ensuring consistent teacher supervision in the unstructured times is short-changing the children in their care.

Children who come from homes where any kind of stress, dysfunction or violence is the norm need a reassuring adult to make them feel safe. Only then will some kind of playground socialising and classroom learning take place.

With consistent playground supervision by teachers, children with behaviour problems who may show tendencies to become bullies would have responsible adults monitoring them during unstructured periods like lunch or break times, therefore cutting down on potential incidents and protecting them and possible victims.

They are children, they are going to push the boundaries, climb fences, knock over other children, experiment with curse words and other pranks or worse.

Teachers on rostered daily playground duty would get to know and recognise certain behaviours in some children, and so be able to alert the principal and classroom teachers, thereby helping to offset certain violent incidents and to seek help for these children before things escalate.

It doesn’t mean that every teacher works through every lunch hour. Each teacher would do lunch or break time duty maybe once a week.

Being a teacher means caring for students while they are at school. A teacher cannot be off duty at lunch time. Whose responsibility are the students at lunch time, the lone security guard who is manning the gate? Children will be children wherever they are and need the adults in their environment (in this case the school) to guide their socialising skills, offering a hand to the shy, weaker children, calming the over-exuberant, offsetting potentially dangerous actions, encouraging and affirming caring, respectful behaviour and friendships, recognising and rewarding heroes, and budding leaders before they turn into bullies and playground gang leaders.

Why wait until security guards and police are needed to keep children in check? Why wait until the children in our care develop unacceptable behaviour patterns then say we have a school violence problem? Our children deserve better from the responsible adults in their world: * Parents to choose a safe, learning, focused school to leave them at every day and stay involved in their school lives.

* Teachers to respect and welcome them into such a place, and fill them with the desire to learn.

* Leaders to make it happen.

SUZETTE CADIZ Maraval