"I Can't Be By Him"

 "I can't sit by him!"  "I can't be by him in line!"  I hear it at least once every two weeks.  I have a serious question, though.  By encouraging children (11 and under) to play into this mentality, are we being helpful?  Is it possible that we are giving a child the impression that they can control the humans in their environment indefinitely?

Here's some background as to why I ask: I teach elementary music. For the past thirty years, my class has been a part of "enrichment", "fine arts", "specials" and my least favorite term, "large group".  We are the last bastion of teachers that have a little freedom left in choosing how to teach our requirements. These groups - I'll use "specials", my current nomenclature, see students only once or twice a week.  WE are also fully certified teachers, so are left to arrange and run our classroom as we choose.  I am a firm believer in assigned seats.  Talk to each other a lot? Not sitting together. Argue? Not. Giggle? Not. And so on and so forth. Is it you where you will Learn. Yes, with a capital L. Even music. 

So evidently I also control and manipulate their environment. However, I am not so sure I want anybody under 11 telling me where they can and can’t sit!!!  It actually boils down to other teachers and administrators communicating with specials teachers. We’re the last to know if Susie and Johnny got into a fight and their parents don’t want them sitting by each other. I’ve been asking for 32 years but it hasn’t changed so I guess I’ll just do the best I can!