The vital place of the staffroom

My memories, as a student teacher in the early 1970s, were that school staffrooms were institutions from the dark ages. In one school, there were segregated staffrooms: the male version was a smoke-filled den of bridge-players supping coffee from stained mugs. Conversations were cynical and the one banned topic was anything educational. In another the very occasional arrival of the Rector, usually to issue some dire warning, was announced by the Depute Rector’s rapping of a gavel of a lectern, the words “Ladies and gentlemen, the Rector”, and silence.

A year later I had a very different experience. My charismatic first headteacher was an exciting, innovative school leader who had been in post for one year. He represented a new, enlightened brand of head. He had only one explicit rule for teachers: everyone was expected to come to the staffroom at morning break, every day.