We had a session on one-to-one teaching yesterday afternoon and during a chat about the advantages and disadvantages for the teacher, one of the trainees mentioned the lack of a staffroom.  I think it was interesting as obviously during the course the trainees spend a lot of time with each other, bouncing around ideas in preparation for teaching and providing constructive feedback on each others’ lessons.

A couple of years ago, we ‘lost’ our staffroom due to expansion, though I’m hoping we’ll get it back one day!  There are certainly a number of problems with a communal staffroom: it can easily become messy, with nobody willing to take responsibility for tidying away books which have been left out or half-drunk bottles of water which go unclaimed; what’s more, depending on the size it may cause frustration if there is too little space to work in…to be honest, I’m struggling to think of further problems.

So, let’s think about the many benefits of having a communal space:

• the opportunity to bounce around ideas
• a place to stick up important information for staff
• a place to share useful worksheets or links
• a physical space to put bags, so as not to clutter up your classroom
• a space to relax in between classes (some teachers at our school work split shifts)
• somewhere for the photocopier and other resources to be stored

A number of these could arguably be solved with an online staffroom (which gets us into a whole other debate), but I still think I’m all in favour of a physical staffroom.