Is It Greener?

School is over for the summer, contracts are being signed, and educators around the nation continue to ask, “Is the grass greener somewhere else?” Every year, the search goes on to find better opportunities for ourselves, but is the grass really greener somewhere else?

To answer this, we must first answer several questions:

• From a personal and career standpoint,what brings satisfaction and happiness?
• What motivates you to work whether it's intrinsically or extrinsically?
• What do you look for and value in a job? What about our life?
• Do you prefer a small or large school district to teach in?
• Do you prefer to work in a major city, suburb, or country? Each has its own distinct feel and politics.
• For your school’s program, what resources matter to you the most? Do you prefer access to a lot of resources or can you work with little resources?
• What are your expectations for a program’s finances? What are you willing to work with?
• How do you feel about parent involvement and what are your preferences?
• Would you rather take over a large, medium, or small program? Why?
• How do you feel about being the 10th Director or the 1st Director of a program?
• How do you feel about stepping into an amazing program with very high standards, tons of resources, money, kids taking private lessons, superior ratings, heavy parent involvement, and after a Director who was very loved and admired?
• How do you feel about stepping into a program with average standards, some resources and money, average to good ratings, and coming in as the 10th Director?
• How do you feel about starting a program from scratch?

Here’s the catch, to find the “greener” grass, you have to be able to answer the questions above and know and understand what YOU are looking for. This requires understanding what you want for yourself personally, how you want your lifestyle and family/friend/significant other relationships to function, what are your personal goals and standards, work goals and standards, and more importantly, what sacrifices are you willing to make for a given job and its circumstances in order to build it into your own vision? All of the questions I just listed and above have trade-offs and sacrifices to be made.

To me, we’re asking the wrong question because the above is not a one-size-fits-all. We should ask ourselves, what job will make us happy and why?