7 Teachers' Lounge Hacks You Need Now
by Guy E. White on 1 October, 2014
Want to have fun during your workday? Hack your teachers’ lounge today!The teachers’ lounge is often one of the most depressed spaces on campus. While people show their own classrooms lots of love throughout the year, the teachers’ lounge is often an untouched wasteland of leftover furniture. Let’s change this!
I went to a party once that had no music or food. It was horrible. People popped their heads in, saw a lack of fun and ran away as fast as they could. Why would anyone want to hang out in a space without any play happening? I’ve had quite the experience with many teachers’ lounges over the years. These rooms are poorly decorated, sterile environments with nothing adorning them except a smelly fridge. Many even lack the most important appliance of a school: a coffee machine. Have you had the same experience with your teachers’ lounge?
Talking with dozens of high school activities directors in the state of California (the people responsible for making these spaces great), I’ve amassed some of the top “hacks” that I’ve heard on how to pimp out your teachers’ lounge.
1. Sponsor the Lounge
Local businesses can be easily convinced that having their logo or banner hanging in the staff lounge next to the most adult trafficked area of the school (the staff restrooms) is a profitable move and may be worth $200–$500 a year. Clear a wall, hang mock banners for placement and sell the spaces for a yearly fee. Use the cash to pimp out the lounge.
2. Ping Pong Palace
Table games make a great lounge, hands down. Go to your local big-box stores (especially those that sell memberships) and ask the general manager to donate a floor model of a table game (like table tennis) to the lounge. Spray-paint the logo of the store on it. Offer to have membership drive lunches in the lounge a few times a year.
3. Get Couches
The drought of couches in staff lounges is quite confusing to me. Go to local garage sales and make deals with the proprietors to get an awesome couch or three for your local high school. Get a few coffee tables too!
4. Get a K-Cup Coffee Machine
People can bring their own K-Cups and brew their own coffee. This costs nearly nothing to the school. What it does is bring people together around the holy grail of appliances.
5. Offer Dedicated Lunch Service
Faculty will pay a premium, often, to pre-order lunches and have them provided by the local lunch staff. Work with your lunch staff to create a prix-fixe menu in advance. This could change, potentially each week. Lunches are offered on a pre-order only basis. This generates cash and creates a hub of eating.
6. TV and Nintendo
… or any game system, for that matter. Nearly every campus has an extra TV floating around. Put it in the staff lounge, attach it to a game system and watch the fellas flock to it (and some ladies too).
7. Treat the Staff Lounge Like a Classroom
The engagement level in the staff lounge is a measure of the social health of the school overall. If faculty and staff are not dining with one another, something is greatly wrong with the relational health of the human beings on your campus. Make the staff lounge a learning lab of sorts where you get to build the relationship health of your fellow employees.
Do you do something special for your staff lounge? What have we forgotten? Tell us in the comments below.
Image Copyright © 2014 Lightstock, LLC and is licensed by Triumphant Heart International, Inc. and is used with permission. Photo is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the photo, if any, is a model.
