As a supervisor of Pre-service teachers, I start my first meeting with my students with a list of do’s and Don’ts, High up on the Don’t list is a very important rule for all new teachers: Stay out of the Faculty Lounge. Although it is a gathering place for educators, it is in reality not a place to professionally develop.
The teacher’s lounge or faculty room is one of the most important rooms in a school building for some teachers. It is an oasis from the stress, a place to blow off steam. Back in the day it was a smoke-filled room. (That is a great example of “what the hell were we thinking” items.) It is a social room for faculty. It is the virtual water cooler where those types of conversations take place. It is a place where teachers can voice opinions about education with colleagues. Some schools offer Department offices providing a mini-experience of the same things for department members only, an exclusive lounge.
Then there is the “Dark Side” of the lounge. It is a place for student bashing, teacher bashing, administrator bashing, and finally a place for parent bashing. It is a place where careers can be torpedoed by individuals publicly ridiculing colleagues. It is a place that can be very intimidating to new teachers. It is a bastion of traditional ideas and stories of those who got away with things that could not be done today.
The reality is that, it is not a place for Professional Development. It is not thought of as the place where one goes to discuss the latest methods or research in education. It is not thought of as the place where one would see the latest best practices in a lesson for professional development, or videos of the latest speakers on educational topics. Marzano, Kohn, November, Gardner, Rheingold, and Heidi Hayes Jacobs are not names bandied about in the Lounge. Most people are not listening to podcasts, or viewing webinars, or exchanging links. The discussion of which apps are best for which outcomes is a rare bird indeed. As a matter of fact, many of these terms, or at least the experience of use of these things would be foreign to many, if not most, in the room.
If you did not recognize this description, because your school has no such room, or nothing negative happens in your faculty lounge it can mean only one thing. After four decades of teaching, supervising, and observing in hundreds of schools, I never visited your school. I guess that I should only say that this is a description of a lounge in many schools I have visited. Of course the names will be withheld to protect the innocent.
If the exchange of educational ideas is not taking place in the areas where teachers gather, it must take place somewhere else. Perhaps the district is supplying a time and place for the exchange of ideas to happen. There is always the monthly or bi-weekly Department meeting that occurs at the end of the school day when teachers are always open to new challenging ideas.
If educators are to be relevant and literate in this digital age, these are the types of things that need to be discussed and planned for. If we as educators are not discussing this now, we will soon reach a point where it will not matter.
We are in an environment of people being fed up with status quo. We are in an environment where expenditures of money are demanding higher accountability. We are in an environment where people want more bang for less bucks, more effort from fewer people, more education with less time to do it, more testing for better outcomes with less time to teach, because of more time required for test preparation. No matter how fast that mouse runs there is always more of that spinning wheel.
As I discussed this with my friend, Dr. Joe Pisano, he pointed out that maybe the walls we need to knock down with technology are the walls of the Faculty Room and the Myth of educators exchanging ideas for Professional Development. The box that we need to think outside of is the school building itself. We need to involve educators to engage others on a global network of educators. We cannot count on Districts supplying the time and place for needed discussions to happen. They are not leading us to the needed reform to maintain our relevance and ultimately our jobs.
We need to share our digital collaborative efforts that have educators involved in Twitter, Ning, Delicious, Diigo, Wikis, and any of the web tools out there now or yet to come. We navigate an information-rich environment. We are collaborating daily. We are using Blog posts for reflection and deep discussions. As Educators on the Professional Learning Network we do all of this and benefit by it daily, yet we are a minority of educators. We represent the smallest of fractions of the Millions of teachers who still rely on the Teachers Lounge for relevant Professional Development.
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My Island View 
Let me suggest another approach to the teachers’ lounge issue. If the teacher’s lounge is the enemy, then your students need to know the enemy. Discuss the teachers’ lounge stereotype and have then go there to listen and gather data about the culture they find. Think of it as qualitative research. Get them together so they can compare the range of experiences that they observe. It is important that they don’t get sucked into the negativity that can exist, but if they see if for what it is, they can avoid being influenced and may even be able to make a positive difference.
DrDougGreen.Com
I have to respectfully disagree with a lot of this post. The old “don’t go into the faculty room because it is filled with negativity” is a message that colleges have been routinely giving to students for quite some time. My experience as a teacher of 8 years in three different buildings (and therefore 3 different faculty rooms) forces me to cringe when I think of colleges sending this tired message. Through the course of my career I have engaged in countless professional discussions in my faculty rooms that have helped me to be reflective in my own practice and grow in my profession. The faculty room is a place that I openly encourage new teachers and pre-service teachers to go for their lunch periods. I find that it is a place for sharing ideas, discussing the many challenges of the job, supporting each other, and, on many occasions, having my sanity restored. I have come to view it as a sanctuary in what can be a very tumultuous workplace. My faculty rooms have been places that I have gotten news, both local and national, regarding education and many other issues. It has been a birthplace of many collaborative projects that I have worked with teachers on. More recently it has become a place where I have shared various digital tools and web 2.0 tools (when the district’s wireless signal allows me) with colleagues.
Too often I see new teachers spending their lunch time alone in their class doing whatever it is that they do there. Probably because they have been told in college that the faculty room is an evil place. However the result is a teacher who is not sharing at all with his/her colleagues. No exchange of ideas, no learning from his/her peers. These teachers tend to want to hoard all the good ideas to themselves, not realizing how many good ones they are missing out on.
It is not a stretch to say that I would not still be a teacher if it weren’t for my faculty rooms.
I am lucky enough to have a faculty room at my high school that is a positive place to go. For many years that was not so but I still went there to hear what others had to say, maybe learn something positive, and even for the entertainment value. Of course, it was also by necessity because we did not (and still don’t) have teacher or department offices and I traveled to many different classrooms so did not have one to call my own. Turns out it is a blessing in disguise. I can ask questions, overhear conversations and find out what others are doing. Sure we occasionally have discussions about the unintelligent things that students sometimes do but if you can’t roll with those things you are unrealistic about the profession. It comes with the territory.
One of our veteran math teachers, who is extremely well respected by students, parents, and peers says that our faculty is as strong as it is because we basically must share the faculty room. Without individual offices we have an opportunity to come together each day – if we see it as such and take advantage. Those of us who belong to networks such as this and use Twitter to learn and share have found these avenues to help us continue this process beyond the school day, the school walls, and our school colleagues.
[…] via My Island View […]
During my undergraduate years, I heard a lot of bad things about the teachers’ lounge. After having to sit in the lounge for two practicums and student teaching, I quickly learned why the teachers’ lounge was often so stereotyped. Your post described a lot of the things I have seen and heard. There was a lot of bashing, moaning, and complaining and for a long time, I wished I was allowed to sit alone in the classroom for lunch just to get away from the negativity.
However, looking back now, I am glad that my supervisor and later my cooperative teacher made me sit through that experience. I learned to listen carefully to important issues, to note student problems and compare/contrast what other teachers did to address/help student problems, and promote healthy collaborative relationships with other teachers. By immersing myself in that environment and choosing to look for the learning opportunities the environment presented, I was more attuned to what was going around in the school than my peers who ate alone.
I agree with you that in order to make change happen, we as teachers need to become more involved in the global aspect of things. I love my online PLN, but as you have written, those of us who get our own PD through our PLNs still only comprise a small fraction of the teaching population. It is frustrating because I sometimes feel like I’m on a time-machine roller-coaster; how is it possible to have a stimulating #edchat conversation in the afternoon and then sit in a graduate course lecture hall for three hours at night?
As aggravating as it is though, I think realistically, we all need to be in the teachers’ lounge. If we want change, we have to sit in the middle of what it is that we’re trying to change. And I think that before we try to move onto global networks, we should make an honest effort with our local networks. It doesn’t make sense if we’re sitting alone in our classrooms, or offices, and tweeting about collaboration. I think Mr. Green hit it on the head when he said we need to “see it for what it is”, and use that to our advantage for making positive change.
I have also seen the same as the previous commenters – when I was subbing waiting to find a job I would try to eat in the faculty lounge in order to network with the teachers in the building and get jobs. At my school we have a math office where we all have our desks and eat lunch. Some of my math colleagues do not spend much time in there, and while I know one in particular is forging relationships with other teachers outside in the smoking area, I also know he is less knowledgeable about deadlines we have to fill or co-planning with other Algebra 1 teachers.
I always feel much more satisfied with my job when I feel the collegiality of our office. Brian’s comment about colleges teaching pre-service teachers to avoid the lounge – I think it’s ironic, because I’m remembering that I also often was reminded to make sure I don’t become an island, holed up in my classroom.
I love what mscheska had to say here: “If we want change, we have to sit in the middle of what it is that we’re trying to change.”
While I have certainly experienced the traditional lounge as described by Tom, I also believe teacher leadership can flourish there. Cultural shifts can happen if the right conversations are started by the right people in the right way. It is up to us to make the lounge what it ought to be. A lounge can be an excellent place for powerful discourse AND an excellent place to let off steam.
And when the lounge is taking more from a teacher than it is giving back, there is always the Internet-ready PLN here and available for refueling tired leaders for the journey.
Thanks. You are right, if we want change, we must be the change.
Our school doesn’t have a lounge and I constantly talk about the need for one for those moments of connection- those opportunities for integration- those conversations about students that are necessary- I had forgotten that perhaps they could be nests of negativity- I just miss a place where we can all see each other- we only have our elevators.. and the lunchroom!
Your description is consistent with my experience. One thought to put in the stream. I bet the quality of the culture in the teacher’s lounge is precisely the best place to understand the quality of the culture in the school building and thus in the classrooms.
A commenter above suggested what sounded to me like an Action Research to understand precisely what and why are the elements of a broken culture. It might be just the right way to solve the single most powerful driver of the broken sub classroom .
Tom, I would agree with most of your comments. Our faculty lounge is not filled with positive energy. What is particularly difficult is that in an elementary school, each grade level has a different lunch time and so I don’t get to collaborate with colleagues that are interested in the same things I am. I would suggest to your student teachers that they find out which teachers are actively moving forward in their professional development and meet together in a mutual classroom.
I couldn’t agree more. During my observations, I have experienced very uncomfortable situations in the faculty room. The teachers bash the students and to me it is just uncalled for. Aren’t we supposed to be teachers? Isn’t the goal of a teacher to help a student the best they can and to never judge? I know you need a lot of patience while teaching, but getting frustrated with a student so much as to “bash” them to others is not right!
I no longer go in the lounge for my lunch period. I enjoy the rare quiet moment at my desk, usually browsing the web, Twitter (@DoeMiSo) or getting some things done. After that, I usually feel prepared for the remainder of my day. I can chit-chat after buses leave when we are all checking out at the end of the day.
As a first year teacher, I try to rotate through out 2 teacher’s lounges, other classrooms on my floor and my own room during my prep and lunch. I think each one has it’s own use and reflects my mood for the day. The teacher’s lounge is definitely not a place to grade or lesson plan, but it is a place to chat, and if I have my laptop, older teachers tend to ask me questions about technology and I can help them and/or expose them to new resources (like Google apps and even Twitter for a few). I dislike the negativity, and often feel like I’m the only one defending our admin and chancellor, but if we’re not there to rebut it, then misconceptions just keep going. Definitely can’t handle the teacher’s lounge every day though for sure!
Not our teacher’s lounge! I have to agree with the many others (for all their excellent reasons) and hope this is scratched from the list. (though I’d advise to stay away if dieting!)
PD happens everywhere. While gardening, over coffee with our friends, angry in the hallway, alone with a book, on twitter and also in the teacher’s lounge.
David