Thank You

This week is a celebration in Queensland for State Education Week ending on Friday with World Teachers Day. It is also the week that I get to celebrate with some amazing teachers in the QCT TeachX Awards Ceremony.

I am honoured that I was shortlisted out of 400 applicants to the top ten in my category. Thursday is a virtual awards ceremony to celebrate the winners in each category. So why am I telling you all this? Well I want to give a massive shout out to the people who did my application. You see I knew nothing about this celebration award thing.

All my life I was told to work hard, do your job well and good things will follow. Now in my mind that was things like promotions or being able to lead teams or be apart of special projects. However none of those “things” actually happened to me. Or so I thought.

Instead, what I have come to realise is something of far greater importance. I have the respect of my colleagues and bosses. I have leeway to carry out new and different ideas. I am leading teams but not how I thought. I lead by doing. I lead by collaborating and networking with other talented people receiving their feedback for various improvements.

I recently read the book “Wolfpack” by Abby Wambach and took a number of her points to heart. Especially the idea of leading from the bench. Doing anything to assist my colleagues to achieve either an idea or school goal or to make sure our kids get what they need. The idea of leading from the bench has been life changing for me.

It has made me realise that when you are doing your job and truely supporting and collaborating with your peers, good things do happen. Colleagues saw what I was doing and nominated me for an award. Whether I “win” or not means little to me. I have already won. I get to work with amazing people everyday. So thank you to those amazing people who saw me and nominated me. I don’t know if you realise how truely appreciative and humbled I am by your gesture. So I’ll say a very simple Thank You, and can’t wait to get back to sharing, collaborating and working with you all today.