Is Gum a Sticky Situation at School?

Chewing gum in and out of class has been one of the biggest issues in Stoller Middle School. One of the biggest problems is that kids are sticking it under the table and chewing gum when their not supposed to chew gum. This seems like a very sticky situation that both students and teachers have to deal with. Teachers are always telling kids not to chew gum and kids are always complaining thinking that gum should be allowed to be chewed in school. So who should we agree with?

While listening to teachers talk about gum, they think that it’s the worse idea to chew gum at school. “People always stick it underneath the table and it could take hours to clean it all up.” Some teachers mention.  Some teachers have punishments if they catch students chewing gum during school. Some make kids scrap gum underneath the table and some just give them a referral.

So after we heard teachers telling kids and giving out punishments to students we decided we wanted to hear what students think about this situation.

We started off in 6^th grade green hall interviewing kids out on the computers. We asked them things like: “Do you think we should be able to chew gum during class?” and “Why should we chew gum?” and even asked them if they had any ideas about how we can prevent from sticking gum underneath the table. We interviewed 3 kids, 2 girls and 1 boy. All of them agreed that we should be able to chew gum during class and passage time. “It keeps you concentrated.” The boy mentioned.

 When I asked them about the gum underneath the table they all agreed that we should throw it away. “If we don’t have to worry about hiding our gum, we wouldn’t stick underneath the table, we could just throw it away with out worrying about the teacher getting mad at us for chewing gum.” On of the girls mentioned.

After talking to a few 6^th graders in green hall, we went to 7^th grade red hall. We approached 2 girls who were sitting working out in the hall way. They both agreed that we should have gum at school. They thought that it keeps you focused when your chewing gum. They also said that we could just throw away our gum instead of sticking it under neath the table or else we get a referral.

Most of the people that we interview agreed that we should have gum except for this one other girl. “Gum is gross and it bothers you.” One girl mentioned. I don’t think we should chew gum at school. But she also offered that we could just throw away our gum or put it back in the wrapper.

Most students at Stoller Middle school believe we should be able to chew gum at school, but now all we have to do is convince the teachers as well.