I started this blog six months ago with not much but a gut feeling. I was headed back to the classroom at a new school, in a new district, knowing few people and nothing at all about the culture and vibe of my new work place.
But I hoped, really hoped, that this move was a true promotion.
(Shout out to my best friend Denise - Hey! She works in my school district! - who came up with the blog title on a long drive home from Palm Springs, discussing my plans and digging into what it all meant.)
Key elements of any promotion are increased responsibility and better compensation. Six months in, this move checks both those boxes.
Let me say first, I (mostly) loved being in administration. Put simply, however, there’s just no place beyond the classroom where impact on students’ lives is more immediate and impactful. I loved creating systems that made opportunities more accessible for students and writing grants that would fund those systems. That was a blast. But there’s nothing better than watching a student who struggled last semester dig in and smoothly transition to this semester. Filling this role is definitely a promotion.
At some point, I’ll probably outline the dollars and cents that made this move not just possible but good money sense. In terms of my big promotion, though, compensation is more than money.
By making this move, I now earn more time, freedom, opportunity, and peace. When I say “better compensation” part of what I mean this:
I carpool with my daughter once a week. (Hey! She also works in my school district!)
We talk about education. We vent. We laugh. We work through the sometimes horrible and challenging and sometimes hilarious events of this past year.
We traveled to Nashville over Winter Break, taking food tours and soaking up perhaps the liveliest city in America.
I won’t ever get these days back, and I plan to spend them joyfully, engaged in worthy endeavors at work and away from school. And that is definitely a promotion.
When I see all the Sunday night memes that I felt in my soul just a few short months ago, I know I had to pursue this promotion, making a move to find work that doesn’t bum me out when I think about returning from a break.
That is a true and big promotion.
What would fill your soul on a Monday night of a three-day weekend?