When I think of “labor”

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Happy Labor Day - quite possibly my favorite holiday of the year. My family has always taken a few days at the end of August or in early September to get together. For many years this took place at a small resort in northern Minnesota called the Cry of the Loon, but we’ve also gathered in the Wisconsin Dells, Okoboji, Iowa, and various resorts in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. This year we rented an AirBNB near Itasca State Park here in Minnesota - sort of a return to our original holiday.

For those of us working in education, Labor Day has always felt like a beginning rather than an end. Or at least it has for me. As a classroom teacher it meant classes full of new faces, a chance to try new lessons, the possibility of successful sports and contests that we coached. As a technology director, a new year promised projects and challenges with the breeze of a fresh start pushing one forward.

When I hear the term labor, I still generally think of physical labor. I grew up on a farm. Shoveling manure, hefting bales of hay, walking the beans, driving tractors and grain trucks all required muscle strength. My jobs during college were also physically demanding - stacking sacks of seed corn, working as a hod carrier for a mason, delivering furniture, and washing in a commercial laundry.

Yet as a professional, I soon came to realize that jobs that require mental efforts can be as laborious as those where gloves are needed. In my first two years of teaching, I taught five high school classes with four different preps, coached speech and play contests, sponsored the school newspaper, and directed the class plays. And on weekends I worked at a gas station to make ends meet. I swore at the end of those two years that I wanted a job that did not require me to think - at all.

And I got my wish. During graduate school I worked the 3-11 shift in “central sterilizing” at the university hospital. The eight hour, five day a week job primarily consisted of standing at a table making “three gown packs” used during surgeries. A cloth was placed on the table and then in careful arrangement, three surgical gowns and some towels were placed on the cloth. Wrap and tape the package, label it with a wax crayon, and place it on an autoclave cart. Repeat and repeat and repeat for eight hours. No wonder many of us smoked a little Iowajuana on our breaks.

For the bulk of my career as a school librarian, technology director, writer, speaker and consultant, I found joy in my work. In most cases, the challenges were enough to be engaging but not so tough as to be frustrating. My work was one long sweet spot.

So I would encourage having a very broad view of what can be considered “labor.” Muscles, brain cells, and the human spirit can all be exercised until exhausted - painfully or happily. I need to remember to honor all workers and the jobs they perform. I hope you do too.