The Last Man Standing

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What do you like most about your job?

I may very well have written about this prompt before. At the very least, I’ve written some variation of it.

I know I’ve talked before about the fact that I do love my job. I complain about it, sure, but I complain because I care. I love my content area: English. I love reading, I love writing, I love grammar, and I love vocabulary. I love sharing that knowledge with students and truly enjoying that “lightbulb moment” when they actually “get it.”

The Contagious Energy of Youth

But there is one thing I’ve mentioned in passing that I’ve never really explored at length: the kids themselves. I love the energy that comes with youth. I love the enthusiasm. I love the passion—however misplaced it might be most of the time. That energy is contagious. Working with students doesn’t necessarily make me feel young again, but it makes me feel younger, at the very least.

There’s an ineffable quality about youth. That spirit is something that is often difficult to contain and even more difficult to harness properly. I understand why “youth is king” in our society. Young people are cool. They are the ones who are going to shape the future, and I like being a part of that. I like laying the groundwork for them. I like exposing them to information that is going to shape their minds, their ideologies, and quite frankly, the world.

Now, I’m not under any false pretenses that one of the kids in my alternative school classes is definitely going to run the country one day. But you never know. Maybe more than anything else, that’s what’s so amazing about being young: the future is truly limitless. Or at least, it should be.

Bob I see too many students who are socioeconomically predetermined to struggle. They live in rough neighborhoods. They have difficult home lives. Maybe they don’t have many role models to look up to. Without some values, some structure, and some hope, those young people—and the rest of us, eventually—are all pretty screwed.

Providing a Reservoir of Stability

If I can’t be some great reservoir of academic knowledge for them—especially if they aren’t interested in hearing what I have to teach—then at the very least, I can be a sense of stability. I can give them routine. I can give them structure.

When the Wheels Fall Off

Wednesday was a particularly chaotic example of this. The day before, our lead secretary took an early retirement. She was planning to leave at the end of the year, but her son was in an accident and needs help with his rehabilitation. She opted to leave abruptly, which I totally understand, but it left a void.

We had already lost one teacher to early retirement this year due to medical issues. Our guidance counselor left because our principal slowly stripped away her responsibilities. I’ve written before about how there isn’t enough structure within our administration and even less discipline when students don’t follow the rules.

But today was a doozy. On top of everything else, another teacher was absent, so his students ended up in my classroom. It may not sound like a big deal, but in a school of about twelve teachers, with one retired and another out of the building, I was quite literally the only adult male in the building today.

There are days when I hate my job. But goddamnit, I hate those days because I love this job. Specifically, I love what this job can—and should—be.

Today’s post is inspired by the WordPress Daily Prompt. While I’ve taken the topic in my own direction for the Road to 1,000 Days, you can find more responses to today’s prompt HERE .

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AI art created with Google Gemini

The article “The Last Man Standing” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.