As I’ve said before, one of the greatest challenges of a high school our size is effective communication among staff members. To be sure, we have the traditional: email, phones, school newsletter, and public address system. We have faculty meetings, department meetings and committee meetings. And the most traditional of all: word of mouth.
Yet something seemed missing. So I tried an experiment a few years ago. I decided that at 7:45 each Friday morning we would have a “Drop In.” I wanted it to be a time from 7:45 to 8:30 (when class begins) for staff to drop in to the meeting room next to my office just to chat about stuff with each other. Although it is technically a kind of staff meeting, the agenda allows what the staff wants to talk about.
Sometimes the discussion is centered on school finance. Sometimes it is about how tough or good the week was. Maybe it’s an idea that works in class. Maybe it’s about the health of a staff member—or a baby that was just born. You get the idea.
However, in reflecting over the past five years of Drop Ins, I think that at the core it’s maybe just looking at each other and celebrating how good life really is. It is a time to be real people. A meeting, if you will, where the agenda is us and how good we all are each day. Making a professional point, winning a scheduling argument or impressing others is left at the door of the meeting room. Stress is not on the agenda and camaraderie is.
At times, we may have only twenty staff there. At other times, there may be nearly forty. Some stay for almost the entire forty-five minutes while others just stop for a word or two as they grab a donut. (Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the donuts, coffee and juice. I provide those. I mean, how else are you going to get conversation going on an early Friday morning?) Some staff are regulars and others show up only a couple of times a year. Most are teachers, although I encourage everyone to come to the Drop In.
I think that the key to the success of the idea is not how many staff attends: it is that there is always a place on a Friday morning that is there for you. No one forces you to go—no one takes attendance. It’s a place you are always welcome: a place to celebrate each other and the end of a week—or maybe the beginning of the weekend.
Perhaps veteran Math teacher Denny Smith said it best when I first began the Drop Ins: “Roger, even if nobody comes, you need to have these every Friday.”
