Scene from Frank Capra’s 1946 film, “It’s A Wonderful Life”

This Advent season, count your blessings. Take a few seconds to scroll down the list  below to spark memories of five things you are blessed to possess. Remember why you started teaching, who you treasure in your life, and why, as an educator, you have the best job in the world.

It’s a Wonderful Job Because . . .

5. You work with a student or students who keep you laughing, keep you young at heart, and teach you new things every second.

4. You work with a few or several parents who teach. These particularly tough parents make education enjoyable and teach us all about the importance of raising children who are socially, emotionally, and academically fit. 

3.  Your school has a few or several teachers and administrators who see themselves  as artists and teaching as an art (as scholar Gloria Ladson-Billings advises).  These hard-working professionals strive to find out what excites each child and what talents each child possesses, and they use that knowledge to make children engaged, successful, and powerful members of society.

2. You have a union. We live in a country that allows a body of ordinary people to strive for fair and just working conditions. If you have worked just an eight-hour day, have taken a weekend off to enjoy your family, or have health insurance provided in part by your employer, you’ve benefitted from that great democratic institution we call a union.

1. You have the ability to read this. Education makes the illiterate, literate; gives the poor an opportunity to become rich; and puts hope in the hands of all people.  Education, Horace Mann's “Great Equalizer,” allows people of any socioeconomic status to achieve the American Dream. You are blessed if you’ve benefitted from the actions of a teacher or if you have enabled a student of any age to achieve a piece of that dream. It’s a wonderful job!