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 the one that has gotten the most buzz amongst the teachers so far this year has been the "education hydration station" I set up in the teacher's lounge.
I am definitely not the first person to do this- I completely stole the idea from this video I saw on Instagram:
To be honest I had not heard of #watertok until I saw this video- I'm not actually on TikTok at all. So for anyone else hiding under a rock like me, apparently there has been a trend recently of people sharing "recipes" for flavored water that they make by mixing water with different drink mix powders and syrups. The idea behind the "Education Hydration Station" is to set up all of the ingredients, along with some recipes, so staff can mix and match different flavors with their water.
I set this up the week of Halloween- we had a VERY long week that week with a full 5 days of school (with Halloween on Tuesday), evening conferences on Monday, and a 90 minute staff meeting after school on Thursday (yikes). I really do think having the motivation to drink more water actually helped keep my energy up, and everyone loved trying out the different combinations! I was only going to have it set up in the teacher's lounge for one day but ended up leaving it out for most of the week.
The one part of this I will take credit for is the name (yes I know I am so clever). If you want to use the signs I made for the table, you're welcome to print them out below:
All you really need are the drink packets, syrups, and ice to make this work. I also had jugs of water, because we don't have a bottle filler or any other source of drinking water in the staff lounge, and I also got some cups with lids and straws, although most teachers have their own water bottles so they aren't absolutely necessary. Here are the links everything I bought for the recipes on the printout above (plus a few other drink mix flavors):
plastic cups with lids and straws
coconut, peach, pina colada, and vanilla syrups
grape, strawberry, orange, pineapple, fruit punch, pink starburst, and cherry drink mix packets (I got mine at the dollar store- they were cheaper there- but you can get them online at those links if you can't find them locally)
water jugs from (I got mine at Walmart)
ice from Sonic
I think this is a fun way to change up the usual the staff lounge treats, and it was definitely a big hit with a low budget. Maybe you can find a way to sneak this post in front of your principal or PTA to keep in mind for teacher appreciation week....? We all know teachers are always dehydrated, so we can pretend it's healthy :)
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