Day in the Life – “My Favorite Odd Jobs Assigned”

There are times that you would be requested to do things that are not normally part of your normal job description. This is not odd for me, I worked in corporate America for almost 25 years. I think that whatever you are assigned part of the job description is truly the legal way to CYA. Well, it is no different as a high school security guard. When teachers are late or absence without a sub – security guards would have to cover classes.

Covering classes – this was one of those unassigned jobs that I liked. For many security guards, they would just stand at the door and make sure that the students were in their seats until a sub could take their place. For me, I would take it a step further. I would take attendance and get them started with their seat work that usually started the class. If there was no seat work, I would give the class an opportunity to ask me questions. If the students didn’t bite on the question part, I would then start to ask them questions.

My set of questions:

• What are you working on in class? What part of the subject matter excites you? What part are you struggling with? How do you think this will help you in the future?
• What are you thinking about after graduation? How many planning on college? If not college, what you are thinking about doing?

My questions always gave me the usual don’t care answers by a few. I can say that many times there are a set of students that really get into doing something rather than sitting at the desk doing nothing. Some of our discussions were awesome. The best part is I got to know many of the students better. They are also got to know me. The students would open up more in the hallways or cafe to me moving forward. Building relationships!

Some of the questions that I would get from the students:

• What did you do before becoming a security guard? I got a lot! I developed a short 3-minute answer that would put my experiences. The students would pick parts of interest to them and fire away additional questions. It was awesome to see the students faces light up on the parts that they really were interested in.
• Why are you so mean? This would be followed by other students saying that I am not mean. I would answer the questions very simply, “I’m a mirror.” “I present myself to you how you present yourself to me.” Don’t take me being mean that I don’t care, in fact, I care a lot. Life lessons – when you are disrespectful or mean or rude – you will get that back in spades. You get much more with honey!

With COVID my last year, we had a lot more opportunities with having to cover! I truly looked forward to covering many of the classes. I learned much more interacting with the students 20+ to 1. 4200 to 1 is just too difficult at times. I enjoy sharing my experiences and maybe this could help a student in the future.