Just as students wait for those moments away from schoolwork, exams and lectures throughout the school day during lunch, between classes and before or after school, teachers also look forward to their few breaks to socialize with their work friends who add a little bit of fun to their stressful work days. Teachers’ days are also often tiring, filled with grading, endless talking and teaching lessons in which patience is critical but challenging. Through hard times and big accomplishments, co-workers are there for each other and are motivators that keep teachers going. By working together, sharing students and conversing over common interests during lunch and free time, teachers form tight bonds.
Aside from making days more enjoyable, these relationships make working together easier and more communicative. Whether these friendships leave the school building or not, it is undeniable that they make each day brighter. These relationships are especially prevalent at Miami Palmetto Senior High, where it is common to see two teachers interacting between classes, asking each other for favors, exchanging laughter or engaging in a simple and entertaining conversation.
Some teachers and faculty, for example, grew up together, and their relationship has blossomed with the opportunity to work together as adults.
One of MPSH’s most beloved dynamic duos, Guidance Counselor and Head of Student Services Lisa Mallard and Assistant Principal Daniel Barreras met for the first time at Florida International University.
“We hung out a little bit in college, but we weren’t friends, friends,” Barreras said. “I love coming to say ‘hi’ to Lisa every day. We have inside jokes; it makes us laugh. It’s nice having a familiar face; to be able to come to work, even if it’s something outside of the school building, to have a friend and to know that you’ve known them for a long time, they’re intertwined not just with school but also you’re home and you know each other’s families. So, if you need support or real, raw motivation, it’s real. It’s genuine.”
Starting the school year can be intimidating, even as an adult faculty or staff member. Therefore, having a specific person that you are comfortable with — especially having already formed even a slight relationship with them — is a calming factor. This relationship established prior to starting the school year gives an advantage to building other friendships in the workplace.
AP Statistics teacher Melissa Moser and photography teacher Katherine King share a strong friendship that lights each of their work days, despite working in separate fields and rarely crossing paths. Moser and King grew up together and have been friends since ninth grade — nearly 20 years. Their relationship distanced slightly after attending separate colleges, Moser at the University of Florida and King at FIU. Eventually, Moser transferred to FIU, where the two were able to rekindle their friendship. To this day, Moser and King are best friends — both in the school building, trying to make time to see each other whenever possible despite being in separate buildings, as well as spending time together outside of school one-on-one and with their families.
“[We don’t have the same lunch period], so there isn’t really a feasible time to see each other during work hours, but we call each other at the end of the day to walk out together,” Moser said. “Even when we were kids, Katherine was always the artist and I was always more academic. So, even though it seemed as though we wouldn’t necessarily match up, it’s more that we compliment each other. But in the areas that matter, our core beliefs and sense of humor, we match up.”
While having a personal friendship makes the days feel a little shorter and less dreadful at times, these work relationships are also very beneficial. They allow ease for those times when teachers must rely on one another to get work done more effectively. This is seen mostly between teachers who teach dual courses, in which two teachers are responsible for flipping classes half way through the school year. Additionally, sharing students and a class course ties two people together and becomes something that teachers discuss and share in common, thus forming a bond. This occurs in MPSH’s AP U.S. Government and Macroeconomics classes because they are semester courses. Joel Soldinger teaches AP Macroeconomics at MPSH, and flips classes with Kenneth Spiegelman, who teaches U.S. Government, halfway through the year. Due to this, Soldinger and Spiegelman have created a casual friendship in which they discuss their classes and students, as well as politics, economics and fantasy football. This relationship has made it easier for them to communicate, while making the mid-year switch as smooth as possible.
“I think [Soldinger] and I can’t work well if we don’t work together because we share students we have to make special arrangements during the school year to swap students at an appropriate time, so that there is enough time in the second semester AP Gov and he has enough time for second semester AP Macro. So by definition, that means he and I are going to talk a lot more than people in other departments,” Spiegelman said.
With this in mind, creating friendships as a teacher or faculty is an overall important contributor to working well with one another. These bonds carry the teachers throughout their time spent at the school, and cultivate a more social and uplifting environment.
“It’s really rare to find a friend as good as Ms. King. [To find a friend that] you don’t grow apart, but grow with, because a lot of times as you grow as a person, people tend to drift apart. It’s nice to have a friend that not only were we close as adolescents, but then we grew parallel to each other [as we got older]. It’s nice to have such a rich background with that friend and know that no matter what, they’re always going to be there for you because they’ve literally been through everything with you,” Moser said. “So, for that reason I am so glad to have her as a friend, and I am so lucky to have known her my whole life and now be able to work with her and see each other every day.”
