Craig Verley

As a part of our routines, success is often measured through all sorts of analytics and statistics. Even if you score well on annual reviews and do well on the stats that are used to measure work success, you may end up feeling somewhat empty inside.

Most of us like to indicate that we are in it for the students. You may have heard this type of phrase used by many TSPRA members during the course of the recent Annual Conference in San Antonio. How are you measuring that success and are you really internalizing it in a way that matters in your heart, and not just your head?

Take a little time to stop and think about how what you do is impacting students in your district in a very personal way, each day of their educational journey. You may not be standing in front of the classroom presenting lessons, driving a school bus, preparing and serving meals, or cleaning schools, but you have touched the lives of students today, yesterday, and every day they have been in one of your district’s schools.

Have you worked on any aspect of a bond issue election? Did you work on the graphics? Did you work on a video production of some sort? Did you do the planning and help execute that plan? Did you make any presentations? Any part you may have played in a successful bond election has likely resulted in new school buildings being used by students each day; and will be used by students for decades to come. That bond issue may have bought school buses that are used by students each and every day. That bond election may have renovated buildings or spaces used by students. Your work made that possible!

Now do some quick math. How many students are in just one new school, over the course of decades? That can easily grow to the tens of thousands over time. You contributed to giving each child the best place possible for their lessons, every day.

Did you support work on any type of back-to-school event that provided free school supplies? Did you work on any aspect of food drives, clothing drives, toy drives, or fundraisers of any sort? Now do the same type of math for each one that you did for the new school building.

I encourage you to think through some of this and try to wrap your head around the real number of lives you have helped through your work. Your work matters! You may not think your work really means anything because we are not always the outward face of the district. Many of us operate behind the scenes. But your contributions on so many projects are making a very real impact on individual lives every school day. Don’t discount that in your mind!

Look beyond the annual evaluation review numbers and statistics used to judge success in many aspects of your job. While those numbers matter in the course of employment, they can also leave a bit of an emptiness inside. Fill that aspect of your professional void by looking at the statistics of how your work has and continues to touch the lives of students in your schools and district, in a very personal way…each and every day.