Substitute Teacher Advice for Seniors

Enjoying the Kickback Days of Life Originally published on Yahoo Voices May 17, 2014

Substitute teachers, just like everyone else, see graduation as a major rite of passage for seniors graduating from high school. From our perspective, students and teachers tend to have more than a few days of kicking back at the end of the school year, knowing with great relief that another school year is delivering another graduating class. What is my advice to high school seniors? Think of life like those last couple weeks of high school. It's finished. You know you have grown from a little kid who can't skip to a young adult who is ready to go out into the world to work or go off to college chewing gum and walking straight at the same time. Life is good. Your teacher takes off a few days towards the end of the school year and you get me, the substitute, to show you that Disney video. Your teacher left the movie as a treat for the class of students whose high school careers are done and dusted. Without asking yourself you know this is a great treat without having to ask yourself is if this was such a great treat then why isn't the regular teacher there to enjoy it with you? If your attitude following graduation can resemble that of the last couple weeks of high school…the kick back days… then you will know the flow of rewards in life are always like that. You get in life what you can celebrate. What great fortune is there without the expectation of rewards for your accomplishments? Let your accomplishments surpass your imagination of rewards. In the great scheme things when you have the privilege of rewards that surpass your accomplishments will you complain? Finishing high school and receiving a diploma is not just for completing a milestone in life. Now the greater milestones of mankind can be recognized. Life has taught this substitute teacher along the way that these last leisurely days of high school, reveling in your accomplishments as a student, is good practice for reveling in all your accomplishments in the future. One day as a parent, a spouse, or an employee you will have many of these days to revel in and enjoy. Now as imminent college students you will have great hope that during the next four years, between now and college graduation, similar feelings of kicking back and basking in the accomplishment of finishing college work will be as rewarding and meaningful as anything you will ever accomplish. Close