I really work for little, mostly. Appreciation can be reward enough.
When last year my pupils asked me if we could take a city trip for a few days I was faced with an old dilemma: my course is filled with kids from different classes and there is a rule that I cannot go on a trip with just a fraction of those classes. Considering that I would then have to take the whole classes (fifty odd pupils) instead of a moderate group of 10 kids, the motivation to organise such a trip is meagre.
However, there are loopholes for the ones willing to sacrifice.
I offered to use our mutual holidays for the trip. That involves me sacrificing my free time and also paying for most of the trip myself (instead of having it refunded). But I didn’t mind.
And of course it was good.
One of the biggest advantages of a voluntary trip during time off is that only the motivated kids will participate. They know exactly that I am doing this as a favour to them, so they will probably not try to be rebellious.
And that’s exactly how it was: We had fun and covered an immense load of points and sights. I only had responsibility for a handful of kids instead of a whole class, which made moving around and general organisation a lot easier and also gave the group a different feel of actually taking this trip together, instead of small clusters of kids wanting to wander off by themselves.
We usually had dinner together, they got enough free time still, of course they complained about all the walking (and other things at different points), but at the end they were all super-happy and I received lots of stunningly positive feedback.
And yes, all this is worth it. I’d rather work for appreciation and little to no money (provided I have enough to survive, ofc …) than for money, but no appreciation at all.