Chris Wright

Most people spend a lot of time working; eight hours a day for normal people, usually more if you work in education. The thought of spending that amount of time each day being unhappy is scary and fortunately alien to me, but lots of people live like that. For the most part, people who work at High Trails or any outdoor school are happy. This is evident in our meetings with people smiling and laughing, in our evaluations, but more significantly, when we see people singing in the kitchen, instructors having spontaneous solo dance parties, and the interactions we have with each other all the time.

Why is it important to be happy? On an individual level, happy people are healthier, sleep better, have lower blood pressure and respond better to stressful situations. Happy people are also more likely to work harder and provide a stronger program and more positive experience for our students.

When life is good and we have a happy staff, it’s important to stand back, take a look, and figure out why. If we do this, hopefully we make sure that the happiness lasts, and that when we get new staff we can get them on board as well.

So what makes people happy at work?

This will vary from person to person, but several things come to mind.

Working in Outdoor Education, we should feel like our work is worthwhile. Are there any jobs more important than teaching the next generation of Socalites that what they do has an impact on the world around them, both socially and environmentally? Although we don’t see all of the impacts we have on our students, we get glimpses when they have those ‘ah-ha’ moments and when we see students’ confidence grow in a week. I can’t imagine working for an unknown goal and for an unknown corporation . That is a reality, though, that many people I know face. We’re pretty fortunate.

Another important aspect to happiness at work is that our job should have variety. As a student, I worked on a production line at a bleach factory. While it was not the most exciting and glamorous job that I have worked, it had a huge influence on my career choices. I talked with a guy, John, who was in charge of supervising the temp workers. He had been putting caps on bleach bottles for 15 years. He was content and, when at work, effectively just ran on auto pilot; he turned up each day, worked for eight hours and left. I couldn’t do it. After one hour on the line, I was bored — really bored — because I was thinking of all the other things I could be using those eight hours for. I stuck it out long enough to fund my next trip, then left having learned a valuable lesson. Since working that job I have focused on finding work that is varied and challenging. Our days at High Trails have a good amount of variety. The classes we teach vary, the projects we work on change from week to week, and we get a whole load of new characters each week. While certain aspects of our work may seem monotonous, they can be made fun if we remember that they won’t last forever, that we are with cool people, and that there is a purpose to everything we do. Cleaning toilets, shoveling snow, and trail work all make the program stronger and our jobs easier in the long run.

The people we work with make a huge impact on our happiness at work as well. To work at High Trails, you have to be a special kind of person. Working in outdoor education means a job where you live in the woods, work with students, clean up after them, and go out no matter what the weather conditions are like. This only attracts a certain type of person. While we all have different personalities, we share similar interests and goals which helps make our interactions with each other at work positive. Having coworkers you respect gives a sense of teamwork and happiness. We are also fortunate enough to have a job where we can have fun singing songs, playing games, throwing rubber chickens, and dancing – all part of our everyday work. This keeps us young and smiling, just like we want our students to be.

As administrators, we are constantly looking for ways to make staff feel valued. We have kudos, evaluations, training, guidance, and incentives. The kudos are a way to encourage staff to recognize each other, making them more aware of all the great stuff their co-workers are doing. The evaluations, training, and guidance provide us with great opportunities to not only help staff grow, but to highlight their strengths and let them know that we are appreciative of those strengths. Incentives are a tangible way to show our appreciation by rewarding staff who do the “extras” – taking recycling, moving up levels, and being generally awesome. When we are working on projects, there is always a reason and goal for the greater good. Every minute of staff time is valuable and appreciated. We hope to communicate this to staff.

So is our job perfect? Heck no. But we are happy because we feel our job is valuable and worthwhile, we get along with our coworkers, and that we are appreciated. The good days far outweigh the bad days. We want our staff to be happy because each student who arrives at camp deserves to have instructors who are happy and motivated. So be happy. Throw a rubber chicken. Do a dance. And pass the love around; go tell someone that they are awesome!