A brand new app was launched less than two weeks ago, called Sit With Us. It allows people to list themselves as an “ambassador” at a lunch table, and a student on his/her own can look up who is “hosting” a table and find someone to sit with. A high school girl created this because she sat alone for a year in middle school and didn’t want others to have the same fate. It is not a teenybopper kind of app at all. I have already mentioned it to several times on the College Life forum, and it would be great to spread the word to all educational instituitions serving middle schoolers and up.
This could be a great way for a student to get something positive started in their school.
Nice thought, but the problem at my kids’ middle school was not that kids were unfriendly, it was that the tables were round. The kids were forced into lunchtime cliques. They were not allowed to “fit another in”.
When we toured Carnegie Mellon, there was a cafe in the CS building with signs on the tables which could be adjusted to read something to the effect of “Please sit with me, I’d like company” or “Don’t bother me”. (I’m sure someone familiar with the place knows what they actually said). But evidently they got by with the low tech approach.
Without doubt, mealtimes are the worst part of the day for a kid who is struggling to meet people. I have also heard of colleges that have clubs for homesick kids, and that they are well attended. It’s so easy for a lot of people to just show up at the club, the event, or whatever. But a huge part of the population is introverted. It seems like everyone forgets that sometimes.
Your high schools have enough tables for everyone? At our schools kids sit on planter edges, stand, mill around under shade covers, etc. On Mondays everyone has the same lunch period, ain’t no way 2800 kids are sitting down for lunch.
@VickiSoCal - I don’t think the presence or absence of a physical table is the issue. It’s about feeling unwelcome at the group around the planter or under the south awning just as much as a table in a lunch room.
My son’s middle and high schools were both like that. The campus basically became one big lunch room. This is probably more prevalent in places where lunch can be eaten al fresco most of the time.
When my son was in middle school, the band director kept the music room open during lunch. Ostensibly it was for extra rehearsing but it became a haven for kids who didn’t have anyone to talk to. They’d take their sandwiches in to the music room where they could sit and enjoy the live music. My son was one of those kids. By the time they got to high school, they had become a solid peer group themselves.
That seems like poor planning, @VickiSoCal , but even when I was in school in So Cal, it never seemed like a problem. Hardly any rain, and no snow. Now that I think about it, my friends and I never sat at tables.
And for new readers, it’s called Sit With Us, @Otterma
I hope this takes off in a big way. 99% of apps seem pretty useless, IMO, but this one could really help people.
Yeah, at their school it will be, come stand with us, over in that corner by the science building, you know, sort of where the stoners hang out, but more over by the cheer girls. No, not that corner, the other one.
Yes, our middle school has enough tables for everyone. Kids are required to remain seated during lunch.
Our high school is massively overcrowded. They start serving the first of 4 lunches at around 10:30 AM. Lunch is eaten everywhere, during classes (because the lunches are short and the times are ridiculous–try eating at 10:30 one day and 1 pm the next) and yes, lunch is even eaten in the library! No, there isn’t nearly enough room for all the kids in the cafeteria. There isn’t enough room for all the kids in the school–that’s what trailers are for.
At out middle school, kids are randomly assigned to tables in 6th grade. Sometimes, it works and sometimes, it doesn’t. My oldest son ate lunch with the school nurse almost every day in middle school. She said (lovely woman) that she enjoyed eating lunch with a handsome blonde! However, my heart broke every day for him. It does get better, he’s 26 now and just left for a baseball game with a group of friends. I’d never go back to his middle school days.
My youngest son is now a senior and although he’s actually fairly popular in his strata, most days he eats lunch in the auto tech shop, which is also a hangout.
The Sitwithme app sounds amazing. I have mentioned on this site how my D, as a homesick and lonely freshman, was advised by the health center to approach people in the dining areas and ask if she could join them. My D has the self-confidence to do that, but the app sounds perfect for kids who are shy or more reserved than she. It would be great if you could download the app and it would just guide you to where open groups were and if the groups could maybe have a little description, like we play chess, we’re musicians, or whatever.
We don’t have cafeterias here in California, if you buy lunch you go to a window to buy it then you eat wherever.
Luckily both lunch periods are at regular lunch time.
I should ask my kids to draw a lunch map sometime, a la Mean Girls. They are both white but sit on the edge of the area they call Asian Island. (the school is about 20% Asian) According to them Asian Island has sub areas referred to as Asian Jocks, Popular Asians, and Smart Asians.
We can have a very amusing conversation about lunch areas. I was not cool, but my friend was marginally cooler than me. We ate in an open area where everyone else hung out. One lunchtime, I annoyed my friend (or at least she thought so) and she proceeded to throw food on me. Not cool. Our friendship ended that minute. Luckily, despite being uncool, I managed to retain lunchtime territory control, and she moved over to the stoners. Ha! Revenge was mine!
Anyway, there is a limited amount I can say about this app, having not installed it. Obviously no parents are going to install it, so it takes getting to word out to create a tipping point.
My amusing story is that the first day of school at dinner my senior told my freshman she looked for her at lunch and couldn’t find her. Freshman told senior where she was sitting. Senior said, oh no, that’s not where nerdy, jocky freshman girls sit, they sit over by us (the nerdy, jocky senior girls). But not too close.
After a couple of days, sure enough, that’s where all the nerdy, jocky freshman girls ended up.
The biggest difference I see between h.s. as my kids are experiencing it and high school when I did is it seems like there’s many more ways to fit in. As a geeky girl, I didn’t have a clan. Now, it seems like its ok to be a girl who reads a lot, is into sci-fi, competes in academic decathlon. There’s a group for that. I realize there are still kids that are left out but it does seem like there’s a much wider range of ways to be without being an outcast.
