It won’t surprise anyone that my favorite subject was always English. Long before I ever imagined standing at the front of a classroom, I was the kid who loved to read, who actually looked forward to writing assignments, and who could spend an embarrassing amount of time turning a single sentence over in my head just to make it sound right. Words made sense to me in a way numbers never did. Math left me confused, science felt like a foreign language, but give me a book and a blank page and I was home.
Now I’m an English teacher—8th grade, 9th grade, and high school journalism—and I still get that same spark when I walk students through a passage or help them shape a story. The difference now is that I also feel a responsibility. Because somewhere along the way, the joy of reading and writing slipped out of the culture. Ask a room full of students what they think of reading, and most will sigh. Ask about writing, and they’ll groan louder. And yet, our entire future as a society depends on people who can do both well.
STEM matters, absolutely. We need doctors, engineers, and scientists who understand the world at a molecular level. But we also need thinkers—people who can read critically, question assumptions, recognize persuasion, detect manipulation, and articulate ideas clearly. A society that can code but can’t comprehend is a fragile one. A generation that can calculate but can’t communicate is one that will be led instead of leading.
That’s why I still love what I loved as a kid. Not just because I enjoy it, but because it matters. The written word still shapes minds, sets ideas in motion, and tells the story of who we are.
And if I can pass even a fraction of that passion on to a student who swears they “hate reading,” then that’s a win I’ll take every time.
Copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt.
Same 🙂