The Lang Gang: The English department has become a close group of friends

At 10:55 a.m., every student packs up and leaves for lunch. 

At 10:59 a.m., almost every English teacher files into the room and unpacks their lunch.

At 11:01 a.m., English teacher Kristin Anderson shuts the door. 

For the next 25 minutes, the English department will eat lunch in Anderson’s classroom. A place where teachers can laugh, cry and speak freely amongst themselves — their closest friends. 

“No one understands quite what it is to be a teacher,” Anderson said. “The idea that we can support each other and we understand where the person's coming from has been such a gift, and we really do listen. We’ve talked often about how teaching is so hard and so emotionally and mentally taxing and we care so much it makes it even harder when something doesn't go right.” 

Aside from meeting every day for lunch, the fifth-floor English department office — with aged, mahogany colored hallway chairs outside room 500 — is where teachers can find their colleagues at any point during the day. If teachers have good news to share, such as their kid’s good grades or are looking for advice on something school-related, like revising lesson plans, they know to immediately head to the “office.”

What started with English teacher Brian Cappello borrowing a few chairs from SM East’s basement storage, turned into a fireplace, curtains and a faux marble bust. But more importantly, the new English department “office.” 

Thanks to their informal “room,” English teachers are spending much of their free time talking with colleagues, which has improved department communication, according to Cappello. 

“It allows us to just sit and relax in a non-rigid setting,” Capello said. “Even when 100 kids are walking by, we can still sit down and laugh and joke, because it's almost like there are invisible walls. A lot of people just kind of gravitate to that spot, drink their coffee and get the day started. It allows for that real camaraderie.”

Their lunches and office chats made an otherwise eight-hour day feel less demanding. But the English teachers’ time together extends past the work week. 

A few times a semester, the department passes around charcuterie platters and tends the bonfire flames at Anderson’s “Firepit Fridays.” 

During Holiday Break, a different English teacher hosts the department’s holiday party, where red-and-green beaded ugly-sweaters and trays of fruit, veggies and chocolates are a requirement.

After finals are scored and Skyward grades are entered, the group trades their laptops for flipflops at English teacher Melinda DiGirolamo’s “decompression” pool parties. As teachers begin to miss the novels they teach in school, a different teacher hosts an open-invite book club, an easy way for teachers to add to their Goodreads page. 

The English departments at the four other schools English teacher Andy Gibbs taught at felt "fractured." Teachers established unofficial “cliques” and ate lunch in different rooms.

But at SM East, their department is what English teacher Kristine Turner dubbed “one big crazy family.” It all started after the COVID-19 pandemic, which moved the department from colleague meetings to attending painting and wine nights.

During the pandemic, when every teacher came to the building masked to teach remotely, the only humans they saw outside of their family were their department members. After hopping off a WebEx meeting, they would go into each other's rooms and talk before their next “class.”

Eventually, they started eating lunch together every day and leaned into homemade games to pass the time between classes. Coloring contests and chair races, where two teachers sprinted with a wheeled office chair before hopping on and rolling to the other end of the hallway, were some of their attempts at pre-COVID normalcy, according to English teacher Meredith Sternberg. 

“Coming into the building with no students and just ourselves to lean on was huge,” Sternberg said. “But it also really bonded us. If one good thing came out of COVID, I think our English department learned how to rely on each other.”

Although the department hasn’t raced on chairs since 2020, group lunches are still unanimously the favorite tradition.

Quarterly or around the holidays, Anderson’s desk area is filled with glass tupperware, plastic utensils and paper plates — all part of their themed buffet lunches coordinated by the “planning committee,” Anderson and English teacher Erica Jackson. 

From St. Patrick’s Day to Soups, the themed meals give teachers something to look forward to, according to English teacher Michelle Abshire. 

“Being a teacher, it's like a 20 or 25-minute lunch a lot of times,” Abshire said. “It's not like corporate U.S.A., where you go out for these hour-long lunches. We don't have the flexibility to do that, so [potlucks] give us something to look forward to, because it's usually really good food on those days.”

For the English department, they are constantly finding time to spend together outside of school. The moment anyone discovers a new ballet, movie or play that pairs with the content they teach in class, their first move is to text an invite to the 18-person GroupMe group chat.

“Romeo and Juliet,” “The Great Gatsby,” “To Kill A Mockingbird” — nearly any literature-themed event that they didn’t want to drag their kids or spouse to, prompts an invite. 

“I'm on year 32 of teaching,” Abshire said. “So technically, I could have retired last year, but one of the things I definitely keep coming back to is the fact that I really enjoy Shawnee Mission East. To me, my colleagues are such a big factor in why I choose to stay.”