Staff room

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Teachers' room at Onizuka Middle School in Karatsu , Saga Prefecture , Japan

The staff room is the room in a school in which the teachers can stay during their non-teaching time, where they can work, discuss or even hold conferences. In many larger schools there are two or more teachers' rooms, sometimes also separated by subject area. Often there are also teachers' rooms that are assigned to classrooms or the sports hall.

Furnishing

Symbolized timetable for teachers in the staff room of a 10-class POS in the GDR; there are tiles with a symbol for each teacher. So everyone knows in which class they are assigned or represented.

In addition to the usual tables and chairs, the teachers' rooms usually contain a wall with storage compartments for each individual teacher, in which messages from the school management and administration are placed. In some schools, general notices from the school inspectorate are kept in the official gazette in the teachers' room. There is also a notice board in the teachers' rooms , and sometimes a symbolized timetable .

Usually there is a telephone system and a computer with a printer attached, a library with reference works and school laws as well as specialist journals. Furthermore, teachers' rooms are often also equipped with devices that are used to prepare teaching materials or the physical needs of teachers, e.g. B. a coffee machine or a fully automatic coffee machine including washing up facilities. The copier is often housed in a separate room because it pollutes the room air.

use

Smoking in the staff room

If there is no general smoking ban at the school, separate rooms must be created for smokers and non-smokers for welfare reasons. If this is not possible, the legally prescribed smoking ban applies in the staff room.

Students and staff rooms

In most schools, students are not allowed to be alone in the staff room. This in no way excludes pupils from being able to use the facilities in this room (copier, duplicating machine, cutting device, etc.) outside of the rest breaks under supervision .

Use during breaks

For the teaching staff, the teacher's room is usually a hectic place during the breaks . Despite the limited space, the staff room is also used for contact with colleagues during the non-teaching period.

The literary "staff room"

In terms of literature, the "staff room" was thematized by several authors:

  • Walter K. Schweikert: Tatort teacher's room (Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1960). A real socialist educational novel, which in the GDR in 1961 and 1964 saw two further editions.
  • Edeltraut Klima: The sky-blue teacher's room (Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1966), a youth novel
  • Johannes Guntz (Ed.): Schullandschaften (Unionsverlag Zurich, 1988), a German-Swiss literary anthology and text collection
  • Markus Orths : Teacher's Room (Schöffling & Co., Frankfurt / Main 2003, ISBN 3-89561-095-X ). In Markus Orth's novel, the literary “teacher's room” is the title metaphor and the main setting in the satirical novel, saturated with experience. Here the “hero”, as a new member of the teaching staff, learns hollowness, mendacity, self and other deception of German educators. The novel has been described by reviewers and literary critics as "a lot of amusing madness" (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger), "absurd grotesque" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and "hilarious satire on school operations, which drastically shows what Pisa describes only theoretically" (Focus), awarded.
  • Simone Borowiak: Pawlow's Children (Eichborn, Frankfurt / Main 1999, ISBN 3-8218-0330-4 ), a boarding school novel in which the “teacher's room” plays an important, if not the central, role as a storyline
  • Ernst Köhler: Signs of life from Tuttlingen. Notes about a school in Baden-Wuerttemberg (Rotbuch 233, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-88022-233-9 ) - Here you can find rather scattered references.

Web links

Wiktionary: Teachers' room  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations