Features
Leveraging lunch Brett D McLeod argues the case for greater commensality at school
20
as a kind of social glue’ (Kelley, 2015). For schools wanting to cultivate or sustain a strong sense of community, the implications of this study warrant serious consideration. So, too, does the positive correlation the Cornell study found between commensality and workplace performance. In short, its comparison of firefighter platoons showed that those who ate together maintained a level of performance that was consistently superior to those who did not (Brooks, 2015). Personal experience as both a teacher and administrator has revealed the same. Grade-level teaching teams who routinely lunch together evince greater collaboration and synchrony in their planning and teaching of curriculum. Likewise, administrators and faculty who eat together typically enjoy a greater rapport. The same proves true for teachers who lunch with their students. However, experience has also suggested that those who do so are the exception rather than the norm. Given this, schools should do a better job availing themselves of the benefits commensality offers. For if the Cornell study’s findings prove reliable across domains, the advantages for schools could be considerable indeed. Consider the possible outcomes of faculty, students and leadership eating together regularly in small gatherings Summer |
Winter
We do it daily. We eat lunch. We eat lunch to assuage our hunger. We eat lunch to fuel our minds and nourish our bodies. We eat lunch as respite from the demands of our day. But lunch also holds possibilities beyond the fulfilment of essential personal needs. Properly tapped, its revitalizing power can transcend the individual, and permeate both the ethos of a community and the capacities of its members. In 2015, a team of researchers from Cornell University undertook a study of American firehouses to determine if there are any organizational advantages to be had from co-workers eating together (Kniffin et al, 2015). Their investigation affirmed that there are indeed such benefits. For schools these prove significant. In short, the study found that firefighting crews who ate together enjoyed better working relationships. For some teachers and administrators this is hardly revelatory. Indeed, savvy school counselors have long understood the benefits of hosting lunches, intuitively knowing that student bonding seems to occur more naturally over food. This is because the intimacy of eating with others fosters feelings of affinity in a way that other social gatherings cannot (Delistraty, 2014). As one Cornell researcher explained it, the joint partaking of food, known as commensality, ‘acts
| 2018
