One of the things that I most proud of in my work with my officemate, she’s an instructional coach, and I’m the literacy coach and yearbook sponsor, is the work we’ve done to carve out space for our staff to come together once a month on Fridays during their planning on our Fellowship Fridays. With over 200 staff members, It takes a long while to know everyone’s name. it’s been a low to sometimes no budget easy way to bring people together who don’t ordinarily come together. We started doing this during Covid as a way to feed people and care for people. At that time we couldn’t really do face-to-face, but we would just set it up as a grab and go. I commandeered a space in our media center that was being used and transformed it into meeting/eating space. It’s evolved since Covid, but now once a month, we have a theme and we set up a coffee pot for the entire day and spa water, and light snacks. The other thing we try to do is to really come up with ways to level up our coffee. 
I always make the 1st cup and share it in our social media to remind teachers and then it’s fun to see what they make. So there always must be whipped cream, and some kind of sprinkle on theme. We encourage our leadership team to manage it for period during the day. As teachers, we are often isolated in our classrooms, and this was one way that we could encourage connections and socializations during the confines of the school day. We are currently planning next week’s fellowship Friday and I put a picture of my nails for the upcoming week so you can probably guess our next theme. 
We’ve actually never done this theme since we’re normally on spring break and this time we will be too, but we want to celebrate how lucky we are to work together. What are you doing at your school to encourage staff fellowship or make connections? We are stronger together! #whyislice
I always make the 1st cup and share it in our social media to remind teachers and then it’s fun to see what they make. So there always must be whipped cream, and some kind of sprinkle on theme. We encourage our leadership team to manage it for period during the day. As teachers, we are often isolated in our classrooms, and this was one way that we could encourage connections and socializations during the confines of the school day. We are currently planning next week’s fellowship Friday and I put a picture of my nails for the upcoming week so you can probably guess our next theme. 
We’ve actually never done this theme since we’re normally on spring break and this time we will be too, but we want to celebrate how lucky we are to work together. What are you doing at your school to encourage staff fellowship or make connections? We are stronger together! #whyislice
I love this idea! Having a positive school culture is so important and nurturing positing relationships is huge! I feel like I rarely leave my classroom and even when I do I mostly talk to the same group of 4-5 people. It would be so nice to have something that pushes socialization and fun!
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