Teacher Shoutout Book

I've been especially focused this school year on finding ways to boost teacher / staff morale in my building. The last few years have been incredibly stressful, to say the least, and with so many new teachers coming into my building I knew it would be important to try to build a positive, supportive work environment with my colleagues if I was going to avoid being completely miserable this year. I have taken on a few different projects to that end already this year, but by far the easiest, completely free, and genuinely effective one by far has been the teacher shoutout book.

As I'm sure many other schools are experiencing, we have a lot of new teachers in our building this year. Along with that, there is (understandably) a general sense of negativity in teacher land right now because of student behavior, mounting pressure and micromanaging from administration, ongoing inadequate pay, and other factors that have been heightened coming out of the pandemic. I also am very aware that we are in a time in education where, because teaching has been so dramatically different the last 3 years, administrators, consultants, families, and others in the community are uniquely unable to understand what teaching is like for us, which adds to the level of stress. 

While certainly working towards improving and fixing the structural, societal issues that are causing this stress and negativity is obviously the most important thing that needs to happen, I wanted to do what I could to help foster a sense of community and teamwork with my new colleagues, and do what I could to spread positivity- not the toxic, fake kind that ignores the real issues, but the genuine kind that helps everyone feel seen and valued- in our school staff.

The basic idea of the teacher shoutout book is simple: someone writes a note to another staff member about something they appreciate about them, something awesome they did, etc in a notebook and leaves it in their mailbox or on their desk for them to find, with directions to pass the favor along to someone else. I had a few blank notebooks laying around at home that I wasn't using so I picked one that had a bookmark (added bonus, as more notes get added it's easier to mark the current spot), wrote "Staff Shoutout Notebook" on the front, and taped 2 pieces of paper on the inside:

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On 1 piece of paper I printed out a list of all the school staff- their names and positions- to hopefully encourage people to think of someone that hasn't been recognized yet when they are thinking of who to pass it along to next. On the other side, I put a basic explanation of what the book is with instructions to pass it on when they get it. 

So far it has been circulating well among different members of the staff, and the principal told me she has had several staff members comment to her that it was the best thing that had happened to them that year and totally made their day. I did find it on someone's desk a few weeks after I started sending it around and peeked at some of the messages people had written- it was so nice to see all of the positive and encouraging things people were saying about each other!

I highly recommend this to everyone. Even if you already have a really strong, well-connected staff, this is still a great way to help teachers feel appreciated for the work they are doing, and it really does make you feel better both as the writer and the receiver! And it's so easy to set up: all you need is a notebook, or you could even use a binder with some looseleaf paper inside, and a little note somewhere on the notebook explaining what it is so people know to keep passing it. I hope you'll consider trying it out in your school- let me know if you do!