Thriving as a Special Educator Tip #2: The Power of Saying Hi

Before I started teaching, a mentor told me that the most important person in the school was the school secretary. I am pretty sure I ignored my mentor. My natural style is to be a human Tasmanian Devil. I whirl from place to place and used to get busted for running in the halls more often than any of my students. I would roll into work on a mission and zoom straight to my classroom, lock my door, and focus on my day’s to do list. Saying hi to people and chit chat were extras that I didn’t have time for. The short form of this post is that I was wrong. I learned to slow down and budget five to ten minutes in the morning to greet the staff in the front office and say hi to the other staff at my school. Being an…umm….highly scheduled person I literally mean I built it into my schedule. 

The whys gets into the long version of this post. The most high-minded reason is because I wanted  to work in the type of place where people stopped and said hi, the type of place where people were kind to each other. I worked at one school where people were mean. I don’t mean a little mean. I mean yelling at each other on walkie talkies, stealing chairs from classrooms on vacations, insulting other teachers type of mean. After that, I never took the niceness from a simple “Good morning,” “Hi! How is your family?” for granted again. 

The less high-minded why is because I had to in order to get my job done. When I didn’t pause and talk to people, when I didn’t make human connections, my colleagues thought I was cold and off putting as well as hyper (that one never goes away no matter how long you know me), and fundamentally they didn’t trust me or want to go above and beyond for me. I wish I could say that I never needed anyone to go above and beyond for me but I did on at the very least a weekly basis– to serve my students and my families I needed everyone. 

Don’t believe me? Here are just a few times where the front office and custodial staff saved me:

• The year I had a student who, when mad, would intentionally pee on themselves and the floor. The custodian was in my room a few times a week doing a job I would wish on no one. And she never, ever, once dawdled or avoided it by, for example, stating that she had been abducted by aliens, which I would have done in her shoes.
• The time a student punched out a window with their fist and there was blood, glass, and more on the floor. The custodial staff, front office staff, and nursing staff are what saved the day.
• The time a student gave me lice right before I moved and the school nurse checked my head multiple times to make sure I didn’t take lice with me in the moving truck. I will never have enough thank yous for that.
• The many times I decided, despite prior warnings from the custodial staff,  that glitter was a good idea to use on a carpet and made the worst mess ever. Until the next time I forgot  and did it again.
• The time I showed up at work really, really sick and the nurse took care of me.
• The  month that a parent wanted me fired really, really badly and called up and yelled at the front office staff when they couldn’t yell at me– and the staff screened the calls so I could teach.
• The million and one times that the front office staff made the tricky calls on when drop in visitors were worth calling me to the office right away or should wait until  the end of the period– and took the heat for it if the wait was too long.
• The times I called protective services and the front office staff and administration covered for me and said it wasn’t me– and were screamed at in my place. 
• All of the times that folks wanted records and the staff had to copy the one million page special education files and then, even worse, try to get them back in the too small confidential envelopes.
• The time something went very, very wrong with a pickup and the front office staff figured it out first and kept the student safe.
• The time the mean custodian stole my chairs and the nice custodian went against her and stole them back.
• The times my students ate all of my pencils and erasers (sadly, not figuratively) and the front office staff, despite our lack of supplies, still somehow found me more.

In every case, the front office staff, custodial staff, and nursing staff went above and beyond for me– not just my students. The relationships that I built with them became one of the highlights of my day. I got to be the first one to know what was really going down at the school and in the community. And I learned to wear eyeliner. My front office staff did an amazing job of conditioning me Pavlov style to wear eyeliner. When I did, I got compliments on how good I looked. When I didn’t, I got  a lot of questions about whether I was tired and if I was sleeping enough. A few months of this and I became someone who actually took time in the morning to look nice for work. I believe that was what they were most proud of– slowly edging me from the just out of bed disaster I was into the I at least brushed my hair, less large disaster I became. 

In any case, my advice remains say hi. Build time into your schedule to greet everyone, not just your co-teachers. Create the school you want to be at– and be someone others can trust and might help out in a bind.