Simply Breakfast
During one of our CAFE coaching sessions, I met with a principal to talk about his school, what his team was seeing, and where community partners might fit.
At one point, he brought up the idea of hosting a breakfast for his teachers. He wanted them to feel supported and cared for.
A teacher breakfast is a good thing. But I asked him to lift his gaze a little higher. Why a breakfast? What kind of support did his teachers need? How would they experience care? What would make his school an awesome place for teachers?
We kept talking, and he began to describe the relationships teachers had with one another. He knew from a survey the school takes regularly that they had scored low in teacher-to-teacher trust.
That gave us a clear direction.
A Focused Direction
Before that moment, the breakfast was simply a project in front of us. It was something we could see, plan and execute. A community partner could drop off coffee and breakfast burritos in the staff lounge. Teachers would appreciate it, eat, and return to their classrooms.
That kind of gesture has value. It just doesn’t give the school or its partners a direction beyond that morning.
Once the principal named teacher trust, the questions changed. Instead of asking only how to provide breakfast, we could ask how teachers might encounter one another. How could they encourage one another? How could they have more chances to care for one another?
The breakfast might still happen. It just sits underneath a larger goal. Instead of delivering breakfast to a staff lounge or leaving it on teachers’ desks, the school might use intentional seating and questions that help teachers know one another beyond their normal roles. The time could include a trust exercise or some form of team development.
It might be even simpler than that. A teacher could be invited to take breakfast to another teacher and deliver it personally. The food stays the same, but now one teacher has a reason to walk into another person’s room, offer something, and have a conversation.
The goal is not simply to feed teachers. It is to create more opportunities for relationships to deepen and trust to grow.
In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle describes three skills found in strong teams: safety, vulnerability, and purpose. A breakfast will not create those things on its own. But with some intention, it can create space for teachers to know one another, build trust, and strengthen the safety, vulnerability, and shared purpose within the staff.
The work is still taking shape. A church partner with a developing relationship to the school is working with the administrative team to think about how the staff spends time together. They are looking for ways teachers can bump into one another, interact, and offer care and encouragement.
Let the School Lead
What I love about the CAFE process is that it asks community members to set aside, at least for a moment, what they came prepared to bring. That may be a program, initiative, nonprofit, belief, solution, resource, or relationship. Those things may have a place. They just don’t lead the conversation.
The school does.
A principal can say, “This is what I dream of for our teachers, our students, or our families. Will you join me in it?”
Then community partners can respond to what they have heard. They can offer their program, resource, relationships, or capacity—not as the solution, but as one possible part of it.
By engaging in the CAFE process, using the tools, and elevating the principal’s voice, community members connect what they bring to a heading the school has set.
Small Gestures, Shared Purpose
Breakfast, coffee, bagels, donuts, teacher supplies, and thank-you cards still matter. Now each gesture comes with clearer intention and alignment. Different partners step in at different points, and their contributions build on one another. What once looked like a collection of one-off gestures becomes steady steps toward stronger teacher trust.
For this school, breakfast becomes more than food. It becomes a chance for teachers to know one another, care for one another, and strengthen the culture they share.
The principal has set the heading. The school and its partners move toward it together.