The Hardest Day

Today was the hardest day of the school year. After a grueling week of meetings after meetings spiced with a dash of time actually working on our rooms, it was time for teachers to meet the parents, and the kids hanging on them.

This is a magical, almost Christmas-like, day- kids with new clothes, unscuffed shoes, and bright colored backpacks overflowing with school supplies. It is probably the only day in the entire school year where all your students have a sharpened pencil.

Once inside your room, there is a hush in the air, as your new students size you up for meanness and hawk eye. It’s so much fun to give 3 timed reading tests to each student and call out someone in the back row for off task behavior at the same time. It is important to cultivate the myth that you have x-ray vision and hearing as sensitive as a hound dog. Call it like you see it. If they didn’t do it, they’re probably guilty of something else.

So many important lessons are taught on this special day, such as how to walk up the stairs and how to write your complete name on a paper. It takes me 2 hours to instruct how to correctly make labeled tabs for their binders. No matter how long it takes, my class will do everything Correctly. Routines properly taught from now to Thanksgiving will save my life, and blood pressure, for the remainder of the year.

When the final bell rings, and I escort my new class down to the gate, my job is still not over. The bus kids have to find their way to the right bus in a line of five identical buses with a postage stamp sized number by the door to indicate which route. The after school program kids must be herded reluctantly to the cafeteria. The rest have to locate their parents in the maze of cars and buses.

Some of my former students from last year stop to give me hugs, which makes me smile. They look so grown up and responsible now. A sigh of relief escapes my lips. There’s hope for my new students. I just have to remember- it is the First Day of school.