A ‘shout out’ wall, where we write ‘thank-yous’ or ‘congratulations,’ etc to one another on post-its to stick on the wall in the staff room.
Well-being lunches put on every few terms - where our well-being team (ran by 4 women) send out an email with a theme and a list of food to bring and we’ll sign up to bring in food on the list and we’ll all have a massive lunch together. They do well-being evenings as well and quiz nights, getting the staff together.
A lunch hamper - pot noodles, soups, super noodles etc basically quick lunches in case we haven’t brought lunch with us. We’ll just replace at a later point.
If we stay late to do parent evenings, work will pay for our dinner! They ordered in Domino’s tonight, got cans of fizzy drinks in, assortment of biscuits, various sweeties and chocolate bars.
We passed on a mug full of goodies that we would then use and then fill up with different goodies and pass onto someone we felt needed a boost.
If we stay to do a school disco or stay late for an event or something like that in the week, we then will not have a staff meeting that week, to lighten our load. If we help out at an event, we then get freebies. I helped at an event and my family were then given free tickets and I got vouchers for a free ice cream, free coffee and free hot dog or burger. Other times if we help out, we’ll get half a day off, to take whenever we like. At the start of the academic year we get a token to take off half a day at any point during the year. Last year we got half a day off for our birthday. We can take PPA time at home, so staff can come in late or leave early on their PPA day.
They have an ‘open door policy’ which means we can go and speak to SLT about ANYTHING that’s bothering us. They’re super supportive!
Occasionally on a hump day, the Head will leave chocolates or biscuits in the staff room.
If we have children with a sports day, a class assembly or something similar coming up and we obviously don’t want to miss out on seeing them, 9 times out of 10 the head will shift staff about internally so we can make events and not miss out on these important moments with our children.
We are sent well-being surveys which are totally anonymous, where we give feedback on things that are getting us down/stressed/negatively impacting our wellbeing etc. Feedback was unhappy with heavy marking and more opportunities needed for development, so we had time during a SDD to come to an agreement as a school on what our marking policy should include. All of us were heard and we all agreed on something that reduced workload, without impacting the quality of marking. We were all then offered further training in working towards leadership, which quite a few have signed up for. We are all really lucky working where we work. I genuinely believe if all schools were like ours, then there wouldn’t be a shortage of teachers.