Teacher appreciation day: why it is beneficial and top tips on how to organise it in your school

Richard Branson once said that: ‘There is no magic formula for great company culture. Simply take care of your employees and they will take care of your business.’

We know that teaching is not a business and is not dependent on a profit and loss system so yes this makes it incredibly different to running a company but at the same time, if you are a school leader or a teacher, isn’t there something resonating here for you within Branson’s statement?

The questions are really; if you are a school leader, do you take care of your teachers?   And if you are a teacher, do you feel you are been cared for?

Wow… pretty tough question! One I am sure will stir up certain feelings for you if you work in a school environment.   Okay so let’s bring in some mindful awareness here for a moment with this; can you notice how this question makes you feel right now?

If you are a school leader, it may evoke an initial defensive response, or maybe you are confident in knowing that you do your best to look after them with the resources and time that you have within your control. Or another response?

If you are a teacher, this question may evoke a strong sense that you are not appreciated or cared for in your school at times or maybe all of the time. Or you may be thinking that yes your abilities and hard work are appreciated on a daily or weekly basis. Or again for you as teacher, maybe it has aroused another response within you; can you notice now what that is now?

Regardless of your answer to this question, it is important for us to just even ask it every now and then to evoke an awareness within in this area and to keep ourselves ‘checked in’ on what it is all about. Why? Well I spend a lot of time talking here about self-care; looking after yourself and bringing mindfulness/ well-being practices into your daily life so that you can be well in yourself and therefore well for the people around you too. So what about our sense of feeling cared for within our teaching day then; is this as important? From my own experience and from listening to teachers talking about keeping well in their professional life, yes feeling appreciated and cared for in your work environment is crucial to feeling happier and is key to a teacher’s well-being, along with their attitude and perspective towards the job each day.

So with this in mind, I have put together some tips on how to run a Teacher Appreciation Day in your school. This could be a great starting point if you feel this is an area that is neglected in your school or if you feel your school is doing pretty well in this area but maybe teachers are particularly burned out at this time of year. My deputy principal and I ran a Teacher Appreciation Day last year as part of a Well-Being & Happiness Week that took place in order to introduce and highlight some well-being practices within the school and also to bring a little bit of happiness to both staff and pupils!

So from this experience, I have put together a few tips on how to run a Teacher Appreciation Day (TAD) within your school:

• Choose a day in the calendar where there is very little on that week in terms of events in the school (if possible!)
• This day could coincide with a staff meeting or a day where you are scheduled to do some Croke Park hours
• Ask your principal to write a ‘Thank You’ card to each member of staff for their on-going work in the school (Time-consuming? Yes. Worth it? Oh yes!!). Leave these cards on teacher’s desks so that they receive them when they arrive into their room that morning
• If you have a budget, try to organise a small treat for each teacher’s desk too. It doesn’t need to be expensive. We gave each teacher, a Lindt chocolate sweet with a chamomile teabag in a small box but you could use small paper bags (if you buy these online in bulk, they are not expensive)
• Organise some treats for the staff room that day. We began organising this and as soon as some of the teachers heard that this was happening, they offered to bake! So we had cookies and buns in abundance and it created a sense of togetherness as though we were looking out for each other.
• Decorate the staff room that day! Put up some bunting, some lights (Penneys!) and maybe a ‘Thank You’ banner over your treat table. Use some colourful napkins and put some flowers on the tables
• On the morning of TAD, greet staff members as they come into the staff room with a smile and greeting… sounds corny but it really has an impact!
• Ask each teacher on staff to choose their favourite positive quote; something that means something to them and to write it on a piece of paper or print it off on Google Images. Place a box in the staff room where they can be collected and create a ‘Staff Inspirational Quote Wall’ for the staff room. You could also use this day to create a more permanent space for positive words or quotes that is regulated by a member of staff.
• Use the TAD to launch a ‘Self-Care Area or Shelf’ in your staff room; some teachers say that they add things to it within the staff such as books they don’t read anymore, DVDs, herbal teas, lollipops and chocolate treats. It is more about what this shelf represents to the staff; that we are all agreed that we need to look after ourselves and each other.
• Ask the children on this particular day to write ‘Thank You’ letters to teachers that previously taught them in the school. In our school this occurred through one child hearing it was Teacher Appreciation Day and asking could she write a letter of appreciation to a teacher and this act went viral within an hour. Children delivered letters to teachers all over the school! It had quite an impact!

I hope you found some of these tips useful! One last word of advice would be to make sure that if you are in a large school, that you have at least 2/3 teachers organising the day as you do not want to be running it single-handedly. The aim of this day is to improve the well-being of everyone on staff including you!

Best of luck with it all and remember; you won’t be able to please everyone so don’t try! Just keep your intention rooted in the positive and focus on the good you are bringing to your staff and your school.