How many staff members do you talk to?

[SteveB_NI]

Strange thought I'm just having... how many members of staff in your school do you actively talk to, and is it about anything not related directly to work?

 

I get on very well with technical / non-teaching staff, cleaning staff & the building supervisors.... also have a good laugh with the office admin staff etc.

 

Teaching staff members - I always go out of my way to say hello, smile etc as I pass them in the corridor, as they come into my room etc. Some staff in their own special way would dip their heads & walk past in silence, but I guess you get that anywhere? Do you find you mostly have to initiate a chat, even if it's just to say hi?

[powdarrmonkey]

Similar experience. Being a girl's school, we're in a pretty small minority (twelve of us, I think, amongst 900 or so) so we have a table at break nicknamed the Boys Club.

 

Science technicians are a laugh

[rolfea]

Talk alot to the librarian here, the cleaner likes to talk to us, we being polite reply, however it's hard to leave when she starts. She has good intentions though, so we don't mind.

 

Like Steve said, have a good laugh with the office admin staff.

 

Apart from those, a couple of the maths stuff are nice to chat to about general stuff, and the music teachers are good to talk to.

One in particular shows the same passion in bands and festivals as I do, so constantly talking him about that, he lends me drum equipment and stuff like that, which is cool.

 

Even spoke to him about a possible school trip to the drum world record in Birmingham! To me, a Techy on a school trip is unheard of, love my drums though

[Dom_]

At my old place we were regarded as lowest of the low by pretty much everyone, so i didn't really talk to many people.

 

Here though I've made a point of getting to know almost everyone, and with being a fairly small school (800 or so kids) everyone is fairly close. We do a 5 a side game every week which gets a pretty good turnout and I've been invited on a school trip to Paris (all funded!!!) in January.

 

The staff here are all mainly fairly young which helps :-).

[DevilsAdvocate]

I try and talk to pretty much everyone in the school. Get on best with the IT staff and our VLE tech, but I can't think of anybody I actively talk to who I don't get on with!

[Andrew_C]

Big staff, so not all by any means, but very few of them would blank anyone. The one or two that do are on the spectrum of something disorder.

 

I see mainly musos and "ancillary" staff at lunch, and, by and large, they are all perfectly reasonable.

 

There are one or two that I would go out of my way to avoid!

 

I've been invited on a school trip to Paris (all funded!!!) in January.

You are about to discover the truth in the saying "No such thing as a free lunch"! Hope it all goes well...

[pavlovs_dog]

I get on with and talk to most staff - non teaching and teaching. I have been on a couple of residentials with the students and we have a staff residential doing outdoor pursuits - great team building exercise.

[silver]

Because I am part-time, and gone before break in one school, I make the effort to sit down in the staff room for a few mins before registration so that I am seen and can actually get to speak to some of the staff, who are, in the main, friendly. I do feel a bit left out as I never get to join in the conversations at break or lunch. After 5 years I do feel closer to some than others.

My other school is a problem as I am there across lunchtime but I cannot stop to socialise. They are all very friendly and I am slowly building up relationships, but it is very difficult

[elsiegee40]

The big-school/ little-school or primary/secondary divide again.

 

Here, I talk to everyone! I did at my last (state school) too. I'm welcome in the teaching staff room and regularly swap gossip with the domestic staff, especially the housekeeper (private school ) How else do you find out what's actually going on?! In fact thanks to the fact that I'm employed in grey area somewhere between teaching, admin and domestic staff, I probably find out more about what's happening than most people!

 

I do make a point of taking a cuppa in the staff room either at the start of the day or at morning break... TBH that way I often get told things that would otherwise be sprung on me as a nasty surprise.

 

It's a really friendly place to work... unless one of the teachers has decided that I've broken whatever piece of electrical equipment they've forgotten to switch on.

Edited June 9, 2009 by elsiegee40

[ButterflyMoon]

I talk to everyone here. We are lucky in that we have a good ethos here. The management try and include support staff in everything so it is not like most schools where it is a them and us type scenario. That and the fact the am probably a blether!!

[TechMonkey]

The big-school/ little-school or primary/secondary divide again.

 

For once I don't think that is completely true (though I will agree that primaries are more community minded due to being smaller I think) it is more a school attitude divide or even a departmental devide. We talk to everyone and anyone and at one point our office became the sounding off room (not through choice)! It is more probably to do with us though as we would go out of our way to talk to someone if we knew they had a problem with support staff, purely for entertainment value, no alturistic intentions here. We are on the verge of claiming the Staff room as our second office as we seem to use it most! I even scared the staff by providing pancakes on the great day with many enquires about how much, shock when told nothing, fear of a catch or questions over what is it in aid of.

 

All good fun

[pete]

Talk to most people, though some depts are more clannish and "circle the wagons" than others - they do this to other teachers too. We talk to DT a lot because I and my predecessors used to have a cupboard-sized office down there and we annexed part of their office.

[sidewinder]

Well over 100 staff members so I dont even know everyones names, people come and go so frequently. But I know and speak to a good majority, friendly with 10-20, exchange pleasantaries with most of the rest, some are just grumpy and a few I just dont like

[DSapseid]

I speak to pretty much everyone, especially the site manager as he knows everything thats happening in the school Every friday at 3 a group of us go in the staff room for the last hour and talk and eat chocolate

 

I think the age thing is one reason why i get on with the staff though as i am 21 and been here for 4 years now and about 1/2 the staff are under 27 and as such we have regular trips to the local wetherspoons to get shall we say a little worse for wear!!

[rh91uk]

I like to try and talk to as many people - regardless whether their cleaners, adminm, teachers - I love getting and making myselfs known. You never know when they can help you - such as emptying your bin for you, hoovering your office (when it isn't very tidy!).

[Sirbendy]

We talk to them all...95% are really chatty, some are just downright miserable.

 

1 keeps telling me "I had that dream about you last night again, and you didn't let me". He's a scream, that man.. He's told a lot of the staff we're "intimate", and that i'm a "juicy little man". But then I do refer to him as "Hey Sexy" and "Hello Big Boy".

 

Even worse, his wife's as big a wind-up as he is (also on staff)..heh..we do get some looks.

 

You have to have a laugh in this place, or you'd go mad.

[Sanguinor]

I talk to a few of the teachers here, I find the friendlier teachers are the ones that haven't always been teachers! Otherwise I try and speak to everybody as much as I can.

[Sylv3r]

There's probably nobody I deliberately not talk to, deliberately trying to avoid is another thing!

 

And just because I talk to them does not mean I could spend longer than 10 mins in the pub with them as some of them have very little if anything to talk about (teaching staff).

[AndyD]

First of all I would like to say a big thank you to this thread as I used to wonder "Is it me?"

 

Pretty much all teachers it's just a Hi/Goodbye besides IT questions. Most of the TA staff are a bit mre chatty. I get on with the Head and Deputy head/ICT Coordinator. The office staff are pretty friendly too along with the caretaker.

 

Never been in this situation ever before though as other work places that I have worked in has been a very friendly banter