That's Not My Job

One of the things that always drove me insane as a teacher was when I would ask a child to pick up a piece of trash off of our classroom floor, and their first response would be "I didn't put it there" or "that's not mine"!  I grew up where we all worked together to get what needs to be done, done.

When Angela Maiers came and spoke to my team back in August, she told us that one of the worst things we could do as a team is to tell someone else that something wasn't our job.  And it's true.  When you work at a school, you do much more than you job title suggests.

We begin to "drop the ball" with things though when we begin to say that it isn't our job to do something.  I remember when I was still in the classroom and hearing teachers say things like "I'm not wiping that table off, that's not my job" or hearing them say "I'm not picking the trash off the playground, that's not my job".

When an outsider looks in at a school, they don't see something and think "I wonder who's job that was?".  They look at a school and expect it to be clean, orderly, and running on all cylinders.  And when it's not, they blame everyone.

As an administrator my job is....well,  everything!  Cleaning, calling parents, filing work, lunch duty, trash pickup, gardening, making copies, you name it!  As educators we have to leave behind that thought of "it's not my job" and remember that we are here to serve kids first and foremost.  That is why we were hired.  So if something happens at that school that needs to be taken care of, that IS our job.