Count Your Blessings

Yep - after a long hiatus, this is going to be another Pollyanna blog post from the GMT. I just finished sending an e-mail which got me thinking about how lucky I am to be exactly where I am today. It is too obvious to spend this post talking about how I have the greatest family ever (which I do), bragging about how much both of my kids impress me every day, mostly by their fierce individuality and independence. Instead, I'm going to talk about my job. Once again, it is easy to write at length about how lucky I am to get to work with a very diverse group of teenagers every day (my school accepted students from 17 different countries for next year!). This post is, instead, about the structure of my job - something I complain about all to often as do most of us.

What has me so happy about my job structure right now? It is the short series of e-mails I have sent and received over the past week. I teach in a boarding high school, and I came to this school after teaching in a junior boarding school where I lived on the 7th grade boys hall of the dormitory. Because of my experience working with younger boys, I was placed on the ninth grade team dorm when I arrived at my current school. For the last 11 years, I have been an adviser to 9th grade boys and have been a dorm parent on the 9th grade boys dorm. (Daniel, please excuse my lack of apostrophes in "boys" throughout this post. I decided it was easier to leave it out entirely than to figure out where it should go every time.) Next year, my daughter will be a 9th grade girl at my school. Having spent so much time with 9th grade boys over the last decade+, I can say without question that I do not want to hear what next year's 9th grade boys might say about my daughter. I really don't want to even know them that well. I would rather get to know them as they age and mature instead of judging them at this age. I sent one quick e-mail to the Assistant Headmaster for Student Life explaining why I would like to switch to an upperclass dorm next year, and why I would like to be an upperclass advisor too (very different challenges and an exciting change regardless of my daughter's presence in the 9th grade). The Assistant Head e-mailed back quickly and said that both requests should be pretty easy to honor. I also am interested in making a change to my coaching assignments, so I sent a quick e-mail to the Athletic Directors explaining that. They won't be able to respond with a final decision for a while, but as I was typing the e-mail I was struck by the thought - "How many people can just e-mail their boss and request a pretty big change in their responsibilities AND get such positive responses?" In the job I am in, it seems perfectly reasonable to request major changes that will affect my colleagues as well just because of my family situation and because I am looking for a new challenge. The ability to do that is a luxury that I MUST appreciate. So often we get caught up in complaining about the negatives of our jobs (I am probably far more guilty of that than most), so I think it is important to recognize the situations in which I am truly blessed by my circumstances. Usually in April a teacher isn't looking forward to anything but the summer, but right now I am SO excited for next year!