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Lunch Duty 2012-2013

Past model:

• Everyone signs up for 12-13 lunch duties a year.

• Three people are expected to do lunch duty every day.

• Some people did their lunch duty every single day and fulfilled their obligations: THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

• Some people never did their lunch duty.

• Some people did their lunch duty sometimes.

Changes we would like to try this year:

• Two staff members at a time instead of three (because, let’s face it: it was rare that there were three which made it easier for all of us to pin blame on each other)

• Shared Responsibility among Pod Members

Since we were struggling with the past model, we want to try something new. Each pod will be assigned a timeframe once during first semester and once during second semester during which you must provide lunch duty coverage in the commons at a rate of two teachers per day. The calendar with the pod timeframes will be posted in the workroom.

• Lunch duty expectations and Schedule

• Eat lunch and be present in the Commons during all designated lunch periods.

• Communicate with and interact with our students.

• Monitor student activity and behaviors to the best of your ability.

• Monitor the major transit areas on a regular basis (i.e. doors to the gyms, pods, etc.)

• Encourage students to clean up after themselves and acknowledge positive behaviors you witness.

This is a shared pod responsibility. In pods, we must view ourselves as a team, whether we are discussing shared students, talking shop, venting, monitoring common areas, or helping one another with great ideas. Likewise, we are trying to make lunch duty a team task, and by doing so outcomes will be positive for everyone in our school. The shared pod responsibility could look a variety of different ways:

• Set up a pod calendar for your assigned timeframes each semester with two people per day.

• Have a pod discussion about everyone’s myriad responsibilities and create a schedule accordingly (for example, someone who runs a student organization that meets at lunch may do less lunch duties than someone else).

• All eat lunch in the Commons every day during your timeframe interacting with students on a constant basis.

Pods	First semester timeframe	Second semester timeframe
UEM & P.E.	15 days Aug. 29- Sept. 19	15 days Jan. 22- Feb. 12
LEM & Moos	22 days Sept. 20- Oct. 22	21 days Feb. 13- Mar. 22
USC	24 days Oct. 23-Nov. 30	24 days Mar. 25- May 3
LSC	21 days Dec. 3- Jan. 14	22 days May 6- June 5

If you are skeptical about the process that led me to the lunch duty schedule, please see below. Since the numbers of full-time teaching staff vary from pod to pod (and also, a few people are pod-less!), the math to back my thinking is here:

For those of you who are concerned that I spent too much time on this, I spent 33 minutes doing this. To me, it is worth it if it improves the morale of our staff, strengthens our relationships with students, eases the burden of lunchtime monitoring on our already overtaxed custodial staff, and makes us more pro-active with one another. Special thanks to Karen Campbell for this brainchild and suggestion to try something different.

Thanks for your willingness to share the responsibility and try something new!

Meghan