Piute County School District,

From 2005 to 2012 the Discovery Channel aired a show called “Dirty Jobs.” The show host was Mike Rowe. The show included highlighting difficult trades jobs across the country. In the show Mike Rowe worked as an apprentice under dairymen, welders, ranchers, and nearly 300 blue collar workers. Mike made it clear that despite being an actor from the city he was going to do the work and not cheat.

Mike’s commitment to do whatever he was asked to do and shown how to do was tested when he did an episode about sheep ranchers. He was scheduled to spend a day with a sheep rancher in Colorado working new lambs. Since Mike knew they would be castrating the lambs, he wanted to know beforehand what that would include. He called The Humane Society and other organizations to hear how the process works. When he started working with the sheep rancher the process was different from what The Humane Society had described. He quickly realized that the sheep rancher's process was actually more humane and effective. He realized blue collar workers are not concerned with widespread ideologies that are not connected to the reality of the work.

Over the years of filming the Dirty Jobs series Mike became a strong advocate for blue collar jobs and education in the technical trades. In a 2008 Ted Talk he described a war on work occurring in the United States. He described a strong media focus teaching the rising generation to dislike work and to strive for jobs where they are expected to do the least. On Dirty Jobs he worked with people who had what society might consider the worst careers and they were happy people. He describes them as having balanced lives and in many cases making a lot of money doing dirty jobs. He joked that being told to follow his passions was the worst advice he had ever received. The jobs he apprenticed for were dirty and difficult jobs that you wouldn’t think would be anyone’s passion, but they were happy. 

I’ve attached the link to his Ted Talk, it’s 20 minutes but a great talk. If you want to skip the sheep story you can jump to about 9 or 10 minutes in. If you are just interested in the war on work, jump to about 15 minutes in. It inspires me because I believe we can learn to be happy and passionate about any job. It requires finding balance and actually doing the work. Mike didn’t cheat out of any part of the work, he did it all. I think when we try to dodge parts of the work it actually makes it harder and takes us out of balance; it takes the joy and passion out of accomplishing it.

Thank you for doing the work. Thanks for doing what’s hard. Thanks for finding passion in working for our students.

Work hard in week 33,

Koby

Mike Rowe Ted Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_learning_from_dirty_jobs?language=en