Humanising Your Staff Room

Lindsay Clandfield and Duncan Foord

Lindsay Clandfield and Duncan Foord are teachers, trainers and authors based in Spain. Their book “The Language Teacher’s Survival Handbook” (2008) is published by sister zine It’s for Teachers (www.its-teachers.com). Lindsay and Duncan have survived staffrooms in more than six different countries. E-mail: lclandfield@yahoo.ca
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Introduction
What is a staffroom for?
The human environment
The physical environment
And some advice about “O” and “G”
The professional environment
Cyber staffroom
What are you waiting for?

Introduction

A quick experiment. Imagine you ask a teaching colleague about her new job in a new school and she answers “It’s a great place to work”. What do you think she means? Does she mean the pay is great? That the students are friendly and work hard? That there are a lot of resources? Or is she talking about her relationship with colleagues and management? Now, we don’t know about you, but when we hear a teacher say that they are often talking about the latter.
 
The staff room, or teachers’ room, is the part of the school where you can most quickly judge the general atmosphere if you stay there long enough. It’s where teachers come and go between classes, where they sometimes unwind, chat with colleagues or do last minute preparation. Some staff rooms are always buzzing with activity and good conversation, with teachers exchanging ideas for the next class or the next weekend. Some staff rooms are a nest of discontent, with teachers not talking to each other, or simply moaning about the students. Some staff rooms aren’t even really staff rooms at all, they’re more like a closet with a few books and no chairs or windows. Given that relations among staff in a school are a key aspect of its success, why not take a break from humanising your classroom and take a look at humanising your staff room instead? 

What is a staffroom for?

We can think of seven common uses of a staff room, though you may think of more: 

•	a place to work (office),
•	a place to eat, drink and talk (café),
•	a place to escape (refuge),
•	a place to store books (library),
•	a place to store personal belongings (storeroom),
•	a place to find out information (notice board),
•	a place to teach, when other rooms are full (classroom).

Which of these seven uses apply to your staffroom? How effectively does the staff room function in each role? Which are the most important? Can you think of any improvements? Some staffrooms are great for socialising, but are prone to being dominated by cliques. Other staffrooms are horrible, poky little rooms where nobody goes or wants to go. 

If you’re not satisfied with your staffroom and the relations it engenders the first step is to decide to make a change. Here are some suggestions on how to do it. They are all things that we have experienced in staffrooms where we’ve worked. 

The human environment

Well you can’t change the people in the staff room of course, but you can influence how they interact. One diagnostic activity you can do is to listen to teachers and notice the kind of conversations they have. Joachim Appel has described teachers as a “community of moaners”. Is that a fair description of you and your colleagues at break time? Try sitting quietly in the corner one day and just listening to what gets said. You could keep a score on a piece of paper of how many times you hear positive, neutral and negative statements. If you’re feeling brave, and have a good relationship with your colleagues, you share the results with them. If you find you are in fact a community of moaners it can be quite liberating and funny to be made aware of this!

Here are two ideas for short activities to do with colleagues which can help redirect negative energy and encourage bonding. They can also help bring people out of their familiar cliques as they find a common interest with people outside their in-groups.

•	Puzzle challenge: post a quick crossword or sudoko from the newspaper on the wall or notice board. Get a small group together of interested colleagues, say three or four, and set yourself a time limit, say 5 minutes. One of you writes and the others call out answers as they see them. Stop after 5 minutes. Repeat the activity daily or weekly. See if you can improve on your performance!
•	Top 6 lists: post a list, for example your top 6 films, 6 most attractive people, 6 favourite cities and encourage others to post theirs. Reading and comparing lists as they appear will help create rapport and humour. We have suggested “non-teaching” related lists, but you could make “teaching related” lists too: most difficult grammar points to teach, top excuses for not handing in homework…

The physical environment

Many teachers are familiar with the VAKOG model and aim to prepare lessons which cater to students with visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) learning styles. We believe that staff rooms require the same sort of attention. If your staff room is drab, think about how you can improve it. Here are some questions to help you:

V Does the room need tidying up? Can the walls/notice board be improved? Are there any flowers or plants? 
A What sounds does the room usually contain? Would background music be an improvement? If so, what kind? What about a jointly chosen radio station, or asking people to submit a weekly play list or disc that can be background music? If people do lots of preparation in the staffroom, do there need to be designated “quiet times”?
K Is there space to move around, to stand as well as sit? How can this be improved?

And some advice about “O” and “G”

The presence of food and drink is crucial ( O and G – olfactory and gustatory). A decent coffee machine will let you  enjoy good coffee and the aroma it produces. The random appearance of cakes, biscuits, fruit (if you are more health conscious) can also be a bonding thing. When you bring in some food this not only raises spirits, it also helps build relationships. Colleagues appreciate the gesture and the food can become a focus of conversation … and of course teachers are often very hungry! Hot drinks such as tea and coffee provide more than just a caffeine shot. In a documentary on British TV recently, psychologists demonstrated that people are likely to feel more positive towards others with a warm drink in their hand, than a cold one. 
Finally, if you’re teaching in a hot country you should make sure there’s always plenty of fresh drinking water on hand too.

A word of warning: one of the most common staff room disputes we’ve encountered is about dirty cups left in public spaces (like the staff room table). If you do have drinks and food in your staffroom, make sure there is an agreed policy for cleaning up.

The professional environment

What’s on your notice board? Is it dominated by administrative bulletins and rules and reminders or does it contain news of conferences and materials to be shared? 

Staffrooms with a “sharing board”, a space where teachers leave lesson plans, materials and ideas pinned up for their colleagues to use, look very inviting. The evidence of sharing inspires everyone, especially if you work in an environment where teachers “hoard” good ideas for themselves. Sharing is best when started from the bottom up, rather than imposed from above. Why not take the first step?  

Are teaching resources well displayed and easy to access? One idea to focus attention on the staffroom as a place for professional support is to have a “book of the week” This could be a course book, resource book or methodology book selected by someone from the shelf for others to write their comments on. Teachers can write comments on a Post Its and stick it on the notice board for others to read. Subscribing to teaching journals such as English Teaching Professional, ELTJ and the Teacher Trainer will make your staffroom a more interesting place to be from a professional point of view. Remember to store them in a decent rack, so they don’t go astray.

Cyber staffroom

This may not sound so human, but for many teachers who work off site or don’t have a staffroom to gather in, the best way to stay in contact with colleagues and build a sense of community is on line. This can be done through the use of blogs or tools such as Facebook and Moodle which provide a space for teachers to store information and exchange ideas. The best way to get your colleagues to use this kind of resource is to create a good reason to log in. Post some interesting news, a funny you tube link or a great lesson idea.

What are you waiting for?

Some of these ideas may require consultation with colleagues or school management but most can be done by you on your own. You don’t need to be the head teacher, or the director of studies to do this. The best way to transform a staffroom is for you to take small initiatives independently and then hope that others follow your lead. 

Plant some seeds… 

The Building Positive Group Dynamics course can be viewed here.
The Expert Teacher course can be viewed here.