Love Your Colleagues. Love Your Job.

I know this isn't a popular thing to say, but I love my job.  I love it.  I see people post online on Sunday nights about how much they are dreading Monday, and I just think, "Wow, you people are in the wrong job." 

You might be thinking that I probably have a really easy job.  Not true.  I teach middle school and high school. I teach science and yearbook, both of which are quite time-consuming.  I am at work for an average of 55 hours a week, but it can be as high as 75 when I'm near a yearbook deadline.  (Fortunately, I am single, so I don't have to deal with the emotional toll of a work/homelife balance.) 

I learned something in my early twenties when I was working as a janitor in an arena.  Your love for a job has less to do with your task than it does with your co-workers.  I really liked that minimum wage job, and it wasn't because I lived for vacuuming (except for the super-satisfying sound popcorn makes in the roller) or that I enjoyed scrubbing urinals.  In fact, that latter task taught me how to do something else in my mind while working.  It was because I loved my boss, Tracy Jackson.  He assigned me tasks with an end result in mind, but he trusted me to figure out the best way to accomplish it.  I know it doesn't seem like a job that involves a lot of creativity, but I enjoyed figuring out more efficient ways to do things, and my favorite memory involved chasing a mouse, trying to trap him in a corner in a room with curved walls.  We finally caught him we ran into a bathroom stall.  At the end of each shift, Tracy thanked me for my work.  It was never explicitly said, but he had a way of making me feel like I was doing something important by keeping the arena a pleasant place to be.  I liked him so much that when I was in need of a job a year later, I went back to him to work at the housekeeping office.  I've had jobs I liked more than others because of the work, but I've always found something to like in the people with and for whom I worked.  Except once.

The only job I've ever hated was, in fact, a teaching job.  The work I did there was the same as what I had done in the place I had loved working at before, so it wasn't the work I hated.  It was the culture.  The atmosphere of that school district was not one of encouragement and trust.  When test scores were lost, the assumption was that the teacher had not sent them in spite of the fact that the central office lost everyone's scores at least once.  Some of the administrators in that school believed what students said over what teachers said, and my mentor teacher (who had been teaching the same amount of time I had) insisted on multiple videotaped observations.  There was nothing in that school that implied trust in a teacher's professional judgment.  When I left, no one cared.  I had replaced someone, and someone would replace me. 

The job I have now is one I intend to keep until I die.  Seriously, I plan to die at my desk.  Don't get me wrong, there are hard days.  There are long weeks.  I've even had what I would describe as a difficult year.  I look forward to snow days and long weekends as much as any other teacher who needs rest.  Yet, I love my job. 

The work is hard but satisfying.  Most of the students I work with are hard-working and kind.  They learn enthusiastically and appreciate teachers who try hard for them.  The administration believes that if they have hired the right people, they don't need to micromanage them.  They encourage us to take academic risks and help us clean up the ones that don't pay off.  They want students to have experiences that enrich their academic and spiritual lives. 

My colleagues at GRACE are amazing, and there have always been some that I feel especially close to.  I've written about Blue Pod before, so you know how close I feel to them.  Some of my past favorite friends have left for different paths God had for them.  Jessica, who started our theater program and doubled our number of AP classes (at the time, we only had one) now lives in Colorado, but we still keep up with each other's lives and ministries through facebook.  Cheryl, who I wrote about in the post called the Teacher Next Door, left us to become a dean at ECPI, but her impact on our math department still continues.  Tomorrow, I will spend the day with the English teacher who left just last year, the one I wrote about in a post called My Co-Conspirator.  My friend next door recently told an open house group that he had worked here for 13 years, and I had to remind him that he had been here 17, so I guess he loves working here enough that the time seemed shorter.  And, of course, new friends have joined us that we love so much.  I laugh with my colleagues almost every day, and we've cried together on many others.  We pray together several times a week.  We give each other advice, and no one is protective of their ego over the school's good.  We just do life together at a deep level.

If you are one of the poor people who spend Sunday night tweeting about how much they dread Monday morning, my advice is that you either find a new job or find a friend you can like at the one you have.