At the School, teachers spend their lunch hour in a variety of ways––some in the teacher’s lounge, some on the patio, and others in their classrooms––choosing spaces based on weather, workload, or the company they prefer.
“Eating with people is simultaneously a really important communal act, but it also is intimate,” English teacher Bobby Gavin says. Some teachers have regular groups. Math teacher Connie Tran, for instance, regularly eats with a group she describes as “the best department, along with some adopted people,” including math teachers Harmony Ausiello, Bryan Jennewein, Qiao Liu, and Daniel Guz, history teacher Morgan Guzman, and the spanish teacher, newcomer Chris Champi. However, Tran emphasizes that while their group is consistent, it is “not necessarily exclusive,” leaving space for other faculty to join.
For newer teachers like Champi, joining a group can make the first weeks easier. “I don’t want to eat alone. Eating for me is a communal thing,” he says, noting that colleagues have been very welcoming since his first day.
Other departments coordinate in different ways. History teacher Rebecca Shapiro’s department holds a standing lunch date each week––not to discuss curriculum, but just to be together. “Food and community are supposed to go together,” Shapiro says. On other days, she chooses between her office, the USPC lounge, or the patio, depending on the weather or her mood. The USPC lounge, she estimates, usually hosts four to twelve faculty members sharing meals and, often, leading to “unexpected conversations with whoever.”
Some faculty members prefer quieter spaces. English teacher David Enelow will typically eat at a small table in the teachers’ lounge because of its proximity to the sink and microwave, but he will also join others to eat on the patio if it’s sunny outside. He makes a conscious effort to avoid sitting with students so that they do not “feel as if their chatter is being censored.”
For a few teachers, lunch can be a moment of solitude or multitasking. History teacher Yosup Joo often eats in his classroom so that he can have time alone with his phone and computer. “We all need a little screentime,” he says with a grin, likening himself to the many students at lunch who find “nooks and crannies to engage with the outside world via the interweb.” Gavin, by contrast, tries to avoid eating in his classroom out of sensitivity to students’ complaints about lingering food smells, alternating instead between the lounge, Grove, and occasionally South Campus.
Having both previously taught at St. Ignatius, Gavin and Joo compare its lunch setup to that of our School. Gavin describes their dedicated teachers’ dining room, where faculty ate buffet-style meals together each day. The School’s closest equivalent is the teacher’s lounge, a smaller, less formal space, with one table and a handful of couches.
Even after five years of working at our School, Gavin sometimes feels “awkward or shy” entering an unfamiliar group. Joo agrees, adding that lunchtime here “one-thousand percent feels isolating at times.” He says that it “feels so much more like college” than the structured setup at St. Ignatius.
Lunch reveals a side of teachers that students rarely see. “I think every adult for the rest of their lives will always be that freshman with a tray in their hands,” Joo says. This mix of vulnerability, choice, and community runs quietly through faculty lunch culture: a reminder that even teachers have to navigate the small social situations students know so well.