As a principal on a high school campus, the end of the year can be a really stressful time. From trying to have a flawless graduation, to trying to make sure every senior gets to participate in graduation, there is also a whole lot of stuff in-between. Just thinking about it now, a couple of weeks after it happened, reminds me how all the tasks tend to compound one another. Remembering to stop and be thankful can seem like a tall order in the midst of all of this.
As hard as it is to squeeze in time to celebrate, it is vitally important to the health of the staff to be able to do just that. As an educator, I have experienced a number of "end of the school year" awards and I have to admit that some ways to do it are more meaningful than others. I would contend that it can be just as important to focus on the closure of a school year as it is to focus on the opening of a school year.
To bring closure to this school year, we decided to have the staff write awards for each other that would then be read allowed and shared at our graduation-morning staff breakfast. To set this up, we sent out a google form with every staff member's name on it and asked the staff to select a minimum of 5 people that they believed they could write a meaningful award for. The staff could select more people than just 5, but a minimum of 5 allowed us to make sure that people were writing awards for someone they may not always get the chance to thank or give a shout out to. And since every good award needs a good name, we borrowed from The Office's "Dundies" to make our own "Staffies." The template used for the staff awards was actually borrowed from our Learner Leadership Council (kind of like a student council) and their learner-choreographed award ceremony.
Some examples of awards that were written include:
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