I am grateful for …

I can smell a holiday coming on. And that’s the first of a long line of good stuff for which I’m grateful. I’m also grateful for having the best, most fun, most interesting, and most rewarding jobs. It’s sure better than unjamming photocopiers or upping networks that are down or asking if they want fries with their ‘meal’.

I get to laugh loudly every day. To be fair sometimes I’m laughing at others, like the maths teacher who doesn’t tuck his shirt in and so his backside bulges out above his trousers in an ever so slightly grotesque, but also in an ‘at least I’m not that satorially inept’ way.

I’m grateful for even my most miserable colleagues because they make up the rich tapestry of staff room life. Imagine how dull it’d be if we were all engineers or librarians or education consultants. How beige.

There’s a little genius boy in our school who says he wants to be like me when he grows up. Good grief – how scary is that? How daunting is that? Every time I see him I try to be better. It’s stressful. But it’s pretty cool too.

We haven’t won the NCEA battle – yet. We will. We won the ‘don’t tell us what we can and can’t do in school’ battle. And as a result I get to teach statistics with M&Ms and who’d have thought that the sweet fragrance of candy-coated milk chocolate could overcome the repugnant stench of 15-year-olds? See – good conquers evil eventually.

I get to watch TED.com and read The Economist and call it professional development. I feel too exhausted during term time to watch Dancing with the Stars – and for this I’m immensely grateful. No really – sequins, the tango and Rodney Hide?

I get to help kids understand difficult stuff like percentages and compound interest and how to combat the silly kicking game that rugby’s turned into. Yes, I’m grateful for the ABs’ winningness – and the effect that has in the staff room and classroom on Mondays.

And the thing I’m most grateful about, about my job, is the overweight, super-dooper summer holiday that makes lawyers and doctors and dentists feel sick deep down in their over-paid bellies. Summer holidays mean sleeping in til 10am and then brunches with toast and marmalade and hash browns and fried eggs and black pudding and baked beans and orange juice all on the balcony with sunglasses to prevent wrinkles but mostly to look and feel suave. And afterwards, a book with a chilled chardonnay.

Really, really – we have the best job.

— Peter Giddens