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Posts Tagged ‘Work’

This Summer in Review

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged A Different Summer, Life, Summer, Summer is Over, Vacation, Work on September 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

This summer was different than most. And it was certainly not the summer I had planned or hoped for.

I worked for half of it, and the other half was spent with two Korean student house guests, and two Chinese student guests / new family members (they will be living with us for the school year). It was also different, because the warm summer weather was delayed, slow, and at times non-existent.

There are things that have been staples in our home and family, that just didn’t happen this summer. Things like daily swims in the pool (we have become wimps … and just do not go in the pool on cool or overcast days), nightly ‘tribal councils’ (we sit out under the stars to the light of the tiki torches, laughing and talking … and texting each other … while only a couple of feet apart), summer school work (I usually give my kids summer school work, to keep their brains engaged over the summer, but working made it hard to find the time … this is something that my kids have NOT missed 🙂 … I have never seen them so happy about me working. But, I digress), and a time away for all five of us 😦

The following is a wrap up of my summer:

Days when I did not have to leave the house … ZERO 😦

Days I had morning coffee on the deck … THREE

Days of temperature over thirty degrees … TWO

School lessons taught … ZERO (Mom 😦 … TWEEN kids 😀 )

Nights of ‘tribal council’ … THREE

Books read … ONE HALF (thanks to my flights to and from New Brunswick)

Pool parties … ZERO

Toes dipped into Pacific … ten

Toes dipped into Atlantic … ten

Korean students our family got to host … TWO

Chinese students who have become part of our family (for the whole school year) … TWO

Camps our two youngest attended … THREE

Summer debt accumulated … ZERO (thanks to my summer job). And every minute and hour of it were worth it! I got to work with fantastic people, learned much new information, and got a paycheck.

Was I loving working in the summer all the time? NO! I did have a ‘poor me’ day, where I griped and complained to hubby that I was working my tushie off and would have nothing tangible to show for it. Last week, as we were admiring the brick patio (bricks that we had, largely bought used … transported here, then carried up our mountain of a property) that our friend (who we had hired when it became obvious that we would not have time this summer to complete on our own) laid for us. And hubby instructed me to look at it, and see that my extra working did have something tangible to show for it.

And, it was good.

So, it was a different summer. It was not the one I had planned on having. Working was not what I had wanted to do. But different is not bad, it’s just … different.

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School without Students

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged Back to School, Back to work, Purpose, School is Students, Work on September 2, 2011| 4 Comments »

Having now been back to work, in a school, for three days, I am confident of one thing … school is not school without the students!

It has been wonderful to see and reconnect with my work colleagues, get my schedule, and hear of the new plans and initiatives for the school year. But … it does not feel like my job, it does not feel like school, if there are no students there. The building is NOT the school, even the staff are not the school. Both of those are valuable parts of ‘school’, but it is the students who make up, and who are … the school.

All parts that come together under the roof of the school, from teaching to non-teaching staff, from parents to guardians, from professional development to textbooks, from note pads to computers, do so with one purpose in mind … to teach the students who will attend there. And it is in they, the students, that our purpose for being there lies.

It has been a good reminder to me of what my job is really about. Although I benefit from my job (financially and with a sense of purpose and fulfillment), I am there for the benefit of the students, not the other way around. I am there to help them to learn, they are not there to help me learn (but, they do). I am there to encourage them, not they encourage me (but, they do). I am there to make their lives and their futures better, they are not there to improve my life (but, they do).

I hope that remembering why I do what I was hired to do helps me to do my job better. I hope that a month from now, I can remember how very boring and even pointless (not that it is, but it ‘feels’ that way) being at school without the students was, way back here in August.

The highlight of my day … meeting the family of one of the students I get to work with this coming school year … That was one step closer to what I was hired to do!

“…the fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching.”

Richard DuFour

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Blood, Sweat and Tears

Posted in life, WONDER, tagged Balance, Bricks, Variety, Work, Working Hard on July 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wow! What a day!

Yesterday I walked to the school I worked at, to do a few finishing touches on my summer job. It took almost an hour to walk there. I arrived there around 9:30am, and came home about 10:30pm … there were more finishing touches than I had realized. It was a fabulously productive day, and heck … I’m getting paid by the hour, so how bad can it be?

My sweet boss lady and I laughed, and cried and figured out all of the world’s problems … plus we got a butt load of work completed.

Then, today I had to work at home … a very different work.

We (by we I mean a great guy who we hired) are building a beautiful brick patio. And we ran out of bricks (I thought we were sure to have enough … so much for my advanced math skills). Fortunately our ‘great guy’ is away on vacation this week, so we had some time to collect more.

So, onto the websites to buy and sell goods, and, sure enough we found a man with almost seven hundred red, zigzag bricks, that were just the right price (cheap).

Hubby booked a rental truck that could hold so many more than our van, and at 9am this morning we left the house to pick them up.

Hubby, our 11 year old son, and myself piled into the truck, with our directions to the sellers home. The traffic was insane as we drove out of the ‘burbs’ and into the ‘urbs’.

We arrived at our destination, and met the delightful seller. He was a man who had immigrated to Canada in his early twenties. He spoke with an accent that told that he had left his motherland when he was too old to lose it. He was kind (he helped us load the bricks in the truck), and offered a deal (with hubby asking for one). And, once we were ready to leave, his delightful wife came out with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of water for our refreshment.

We did need to make two trips, as hubby was concerned about the possible effect of the added weight on the truck.

When we were heading home, for the second time, I was certain that it was midnight, and not mid afternoon. My eyelids were so heavy that I lost the battle a few times, and lost consciousness for untold amounts of time.

So, we came home, and hubby had a hot bath drawn for me … NOT! There was a truckload of red zigzag bricks to unload, so that the rental truck could be returned. I was so not into the unloading this time … the rarely used muscles that I had been pounding all morning were cry out for mercy, and I am sure that I was hearing them threaten strike!

I had also had enough with ‘the guys’ by this point in the day … if I had a dime for every time one of them passed gas … (and denied it) …

But the load did get unloaded. We even sat down to a warm, home cooked dinner … thanks to my handy dandy slow cooker, and whatever it was that motivated me to get something cooking early on in the day.

Then the guys were off to football, and I got to enjoy peace and quiet (once I was able to usher our eldest daughter off to an event). But, since I was already dirty, I figured I would head back outside to build my new gate.

And that is what I did. I had purchased the kit weeks before, and finally got at it. It was really simple. I just needed 2X4’s, cut to the size of gate I desired, and them attach them to the metal corners from the kit (and that was easy). My gate didn’t get finished, as I need to head to the hardware store to purchase slats for the gate … but oh how good it felt to build something.

I know that the saying “all work and no play make … someone … a dull guy/girl” has truth to it, as balance is such a very important factor in our healthy lives. But the last two days of work (one at a desk … I am sure that by hour number five my butt had actually become flat … and the other loading and unloading bricks … every fiber of my being aches) have breathed a terrific breath of satisfaction into my weary body.

Maybe we are made for work … and for variety?

😉

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