Another Work Celebration - Baseball Opening Day

I think I've mentioned before that we're trying to boost staff morale in our school.  Education has changed a lot in the last few years and there are a lot of additional pressures on all staff members that didn't exist before.  Yes, there was always change happening in the past, but there was still some semblance of respect for the education professional.  These days we see the respect at a low and it's wearing people out.  I read something recently that said, and they were referring the healthcare profession but it can apply as well to the education profession, it said that it's not "burnout" or shouldn't be referred to as "burnout" because that is a kind of "victim shaming" saying they're not resilient enough or strong enough to adapt to a system.  Instead it should be called "Moral Injury" because it is the result of having to overlook their morals to be politically correct, to teach how they're told to by non-professionals instead of using the knowledge that they were trained to use. To take time away from teaching to preparing for standardized test-taking.  To have to incorporate mandated classroom activities that eat away at instructional time.  To produce report cards without grades but contain hours of created comments and not have a substantial amount of parents bother to log on to even look at the report cards.  I could go on with my thoughts on this but instead I'll tell you about our latest celebration - Opening Day for Baseball Season.

We set up a hot dog luncheon.  I collected money from everyone for hot dogs and rolls and we had a sign-up sheet for people to bring in the rest of the goods much like we did for our Souper Salad Bowl event.  People brought in paper goods, salads, condiments, and desserts.  We had a group for set-up and a group for clean up.  We cooked the hot dogs in the office in several crock pots all morning so they would be ready for the lunches.  I set up another raffle.  I filled a jar with bubble gum and had them guess the number.  The winner got the container below which was full of Baby Ruth bars, m&m's, Twizzlers, Big Chew Bubble Gum, and a rubber baseball.

I packed bags with popcorn and found Cracker Jack's at the $Tree and HWNSNBP helped me make a vendor's tray and.............

I brought my apron and his Yankee cap and just after the beginning of each teacher lunch period went into the faculty room peddling my tray of goodies.  It was a fun way to celebrate.

Our next celebratory day will be Cinco de Mayo or in this case Seis de Mayo as the 5th is a Sunday.  It'll be tacos for sure.  And I'm trying to figure out how to work a pinata into it..... or some other fun way to celebrate.