Good morning Rams! Are you a morning person? When you walk into school everyday, do you take the time to acknowledge the staff that greet you, make sure your ID is on, and open the door for you? Here at DePaul Prep, there are multiple teachers and staff like Florence Merkl-Deutsch, Christopher Petersen, Jackson Ford, and the security guards, who make sure that they are at school every morning to greet you.
When DePaul College Prep’s new campus was built, the morning greeters started off with the simple act of greeting each student when they walked into the building. As DePaul Prep grew over the years, safety measures were added to the greeters’ roles such as checking students’ ID’s and noticing who was coming in and out of the building each morning. All of the morning staff have similar roles that include managing traffic, checking ID’s, and saying hello to all the students. The morning staff who work at the doors partner with each other in security and safety for the well-being of the students here at DePaul College Prep.
The morning greeters take on two important roles, hospitality and safety. Florence Merkl- Deutsch, the Director of Mission and Ministry, has been working at DePaul Prep for eight years now. Ever since she started working at DePaul Prep, she volunteered herself to be a morning greeter. Merkl-Deutsch describes herself as a morning person “sometimes to annoying measures for some people,” which plays a big role in why she decided to become a morning greeter.
Merkl-Deutsch explains that “before I started working at DePaul Prep eight years ago, I had come from working at Saint Clement Parish. This is where I learned the value of having many lines of greeting in the morning and how transformative it is for the people who enter the building.”
Since Merkl-Deutsch had come from experience with greeting, it was easy for her to volunteer at DePaul Prep to be a morning greeter. “When you’re greeting then people know that you notice they are here, they’re glad you’re here, and you can start their day on a positive note” which is all that Merkel-Deutsch wants for every student here at DePaul Prep.
Christopher Petersen, the Director of Student Activities and Student Life, is another morning greeter who greets students and directs traffic every morning. Since he is not a teacher, Petersen says that he “joined out there because it was a way I got to see kids. I don’t get the opportunity to meet a lot of kids, so being out front is a way for me to build relationships with students.”
Every morning greeter is assigned specific places in the morning. Petersen says that “now that we are on the new campus the North side has some different needs than the South side because there’s traffic coming so obviously I manage that while still saying hello to students.”
The DePaul Prep community encourages students to think about how they respond to the morning greeters in the morning. “I recognize that not everyone is in a great mood in the morning,” says Merkl-Deutsch “That’s fine. I don’t expect everyone to be.”
Sophomore student at DePaul Prep, Ainsley Benson, describes herself as “not a morning person at all.” Even though she is not a morning person, she explains that she “still says hi to the morning greeters because I appreciate them greeting me with kindness every morning.”
Petersen states that “being out front in the morning is one of my favorite parts of the day because that’s when I get to see everyone.” Just a quick hello can put a bright smile on the morning greeter’s faces and make their whole day. Petersen explains that “what I’ve learned overtime is that sometimes when students are seniors they will leave a message and say, ‘Mr. P, thank you so much for saying good morning to me in the morning. I know I didn’t say anything but I really appreciate that.’”
Take a few seconds in the morning to stop and say hello to the morning greeters. It might not mean much now, but looking back, students will remember these people who kindly took their time to greet everyone in the morning and the positive impact that they made on people’s experiences here at DePaul College Prep.
