To all my teacher friends at W. Elementary

One of my current jobs requires me to visit schools throughout New York City. Given my past school experience, my boss sends me to the classrooms to tell the students what we will be doing. I do a cute little announcement regarding the "two rules" to remember to help us with our project. Then I join all the other data collectors in the cafeteria to take pictures of school lunches and make observations. I've been to many schools and each time I catch myself thinking, "Wow, I really appreciate the structure and organization of W. Elementary." At these schools, the teachers do not stay in the cafeteria during their students' lunch. Instead these kids are left in the supervision of a handful of cafeteria monitors. Maybe you are thinking to yourself, "Wow, an entire lunch period to myself." I wouldn't get too excited. I have a very strong feeling when the students return to the classroom they are completely unruly and unfocused.
So far I've observed some noisy cafeterias. I've seen some lacking the necessary structure to efficiently move students through the line. I've seen kids playing around. But today was the worst school I have ever seen. No wonder the principal acted so nervous about us being there. She knew what we were going to witness.
The first lunch period consisted of kindergarten, first and second grade. At first, the monitors seemed to be fun and have a good rapport with the students. But it was soon apparent, they actually lacked any real control over the students. Apart from lining the kids up to go through the lunch line, there was no structure. In fact, I can most adequately describe what I saw as chaos. Kids were yelling (3 grade levels of them). Many were running around, chasing each other, pushing each other, falling on the ground. But I knew it was out of control when I witnessed two first grade boys get into a fist-fight. As my teacher instincts kicked into gear, I had to fight the urge to go over and start disciplining. I was there to observe. Nothing more. As the monitors made empty threats that were ignored, I had to turn my back and suppress all the advice I was dying to suggest. I really wanted to go over to the microphone that was being used to talk over all the noise and take control of the chaos. I'm not saying I'm an expert classroom mangager. All I know is that pushing and pulling and yelling at the few students they were able to "catch" behaving badly was not working.
The last lunch period was fifth and sixth grade students. It seemed to be a little quieter. As it turns out, that was only because the students were given the option to not eat lunch and play outside instead. Are you kidding me? As soon as I had taken the last picture and made my final note, I got out of there. Sadly, I'm scheduled to go back next week. Maybe I should take earplugs. And a Xanax...
All I know is what I saw today was far worse than anything I ever experienced on my worst days at W. Elementary.