It’s the end of the semester, and we teachers are exhausted, waiting for the week to end, hoping — hoping! — that Christmas Break will finally arrive like it was promised to. And yet somehow, it feels like it’s never going to get here. And we’re just waiting. Waiting. Stuck in this high school wasteland. Occasionally interrupted by intercoms and out-of-pocket freshmen wandering by.

Samuel Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot feels exactly like that. That life (exhausting and wearying as it can be) keeps on ticking by. Slugging you occasionally. Throwing rocks in your boot. Hitting you with sudden expenses, damages, problems, and offering no real relief except maybe the people you share this waiting with. Beckett hands over no answers, no prescribed moral of the story. He delivers an absurdist play and lets the two hobo protagonists Vladimir and Estragon do most of the talking for us.

This week, I’m ending the year with my co-host Drew Haston (the Vladimir to my Estragon) by asking if this absurdist work has any room in the modern-day classroom.

Second Stage is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find our show on Spotify alongside our other podcast, With Honors

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Also, throw some love at our brotherly podcast with Coach Haston, A Deadman’s Books. He’s on Spotify at

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as well as Haston Curation, on Spotify at

This episode’s music features “Caught in the Middle” by Amarent and “Flea Bop” by Mr. Smith, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

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