Jesse Graf’s job title may be “technology technician,” but to students, he is far more than your average I.T. guy.

Senior Tyler Hudson describes Graf as, “the number one most chill dude,” and “a Taco Bell connoisseur.” 

At the beginning of the year, Mr. Graf teaches students in the Chrome lab (located in Mr. Jarrett’s room) how to fix Chromebooks and checks in on them every couple of hours to make sure they aren’t overwhelmed with Chromebook issues. According to Hudson who helps fix Chromebooks in the lab, the class occasionally get to listen to some live music.

“Jesse has this talent of being able to play the guitar. He and Mr. Jarrett will play the guitar and they’ll play ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ all the time,” Hudson said.

Like all the teachers here, Mr. Graf cares about every student here at Liberty. He has had such a strong impact on senior Daniel Rivera that Rivera decided to stay at Liberty. 

“Originally, I wanted to go to a different school but I decided to stay because Jesse’s a good guy and he’s pretty funny and there’s only one Jesse,” Rivera said.

Mr. Graf’s day-to-day school routine seems pretty run of the mill. He checks emails and voicemails when he gets to school. Then he gets everything he needs set up for the day. Every couple of hours he goes down to the chrome lab to see if the students need help. If there are no students or teachers in need of Mr. Graf’s help, he’ll go around and check in on classes to make sure everything is working.

When Mr. Graf goes into these classrooms to check-in, sometimes they are playing Kahoot and he decides to play along.

“With Daniel, I met him through Ms. Ehlers’ class by going in and playing Kahoot and challenging the kids to beat me,” Mr. Graf said. “I’ll go into any class and if they’re playing Kahoot, I stop and I pull it up on my phone and the teacher will usually give extra credit for any kids that can beat me at whatever topic it is.”

While Graf has worked her Liberty the past four years, he hasn’t always worked in education. After graduating from Fort Zumwalt North for high school, he went to college at Linn State Tech (Missouri State Tech) and studied telecommunications.

He started as a telecommunications intern working as a traveling technician throughout Illinois and went back to finish college after one year of traveling technician work.

After college, he started working for AT&T in home security for one year. When AT&T branch shut down, the job at Liberty came up.

“Something that I figured out my senior year is don’t care what anybody else thinks,” Graf said. “My first three years of high school I was pretty quiet and pretty much kept to myself. But then, out of nowhere I just realized, ‘I don’t really care what anyone else thinks,’ and then it was just like a whole new world where you can do whatever you want. You have to care to some extent, for example, my friends and I got up on stage and did Fortnite dances. A lot of people would be too embarrassed to do that but just don’t be embarrassed about anything if you enjoy it and it’s fun or funny. Then do it if it’ll make you happy.”

Mr. Graf followed his own advice, ‘do what you love as long as it makes you happy,’ during Educators Rising’s Lip Sync Battle last year. He bought $300 worth of costumes for himself and two of his friends. He dressed one of them up as a Mountain Dew bottle, the other as a burrito, and the man himself had a Taco Bell uniform to wear and a sign to put on his back. During the performance, he and his friends decided to do a routine of Fortnite dances on stage. Right now, if you were to walk into Mr. Graf’s office, you would see Mr. Graf’s trophy behind his desk from winning the Lip Sync Battle.

“I decided I was going to do the Lip Sync Battle for my contribution to the school because I never do any of the other events. So I found this song that is a rap song from this high school girl who raps about high school and Taco Bell and I’m like, ‘that is relatable,’” Mr. Graf said.

Anyone who knows Mr. Graf well knows that he goes to Taco Bell a lot more than the average person. But some people know better than others how deep his love for Taco Bell goes.

“Jesse has probably tried every single order on the Taco Bell menu,” Hudson said. “There was one time where I was going to Taco Bell and I didn’t know what to get and he said pick a number between these two numbers and I chose a number and he could literally tell me what that number was on the menu. I would say he is a Taco Bell connoisseur.”

Even though Mr. Graf was not planning on working at a high school, he has found his calling working with the students and staff of LHS, trying to make an impact on them.

“When I got the training to work at this school, that’s when I realized that I actually like working with the kids a lot more than I thought I would,” Mr. Graf said. “I like being able to make an impact on them because it’s so fulfilling.”

Jesse Graf’s job title here at Liberty may be “technology technician,” but to students, he is far more than your average I.T. guy. He is a friend and an inspiration to do what you love, no matter what.