The first day of school is nerve-wracking for everyone, especially if you’ve had no student-teaching, no training, and no idea of what to expect. I was only going to survive on prayers, which is how I’d spent most of the previous night. I’d barely slept a wink and even listened to hymns all morning getting ready to calm my nerves. Unfortunately, my first day in the classroom was nothing short of disastrous, at least in my opinion.
I had gone to the new teacher in-services where they tried to hype us up about “making a difference.” The guest speaker laughed when she heard I’d be teaching high school. “Honey, you better wear some heels and red lipstick, so they can tell you apart.”
She hadn’t been lying.
When I walked to class that morning at 7:25am, the commons area was filled with kids, and I heard their whispers about whether I was a new student or a sub because I was dressed up so much yet looked so young. (I was wearing a skirt and a button-up blouse.)
The most important thing I’d learned the 3-hour “training” I’d gotten from the French teacher was: I needed to give the illusion that I knew what I was doing and had everything under control. Kids are not very forgiving towards authoritative figures who lack such, and for teenagers, this is especially true. They are more than ruthless. They are merciless.
I planned for everything. Directions were already on the board, assigned seats were already arranged, and copies of the syllabus laid neatly on each desk.
In that first class at 8am, thirty-three teenagers walked in. Some starry-eyed with pens to match their notebooks, some kneeling over in exhaustion, some looking like children who’d been smuggled out of the fourth grade, and some so large they could already have a full-time job as professional hockey players.
I could already tell who would give me trouble.
A linebacker smiled mischievously, another blond-headed fellow eyed me with a frown, another boy was falling out of his seat already asleep, and a girl with large, fake eyelashes was planning to jump someone in the bathroom. Fortunately, I had accidentally separated these kids from their friends in their seating charts
Once I introduced myself in Spanish, then began the real purpose of the first day of school. The mischief and weariness left their eyes as I laid out every project, every assignment, and every penalty that came with taking this class.
You see, the guidance counselor had told me to be mean. Students had the option to waiver out of a foreign language, and I wanted to be clear that the troublemakers needed to make a getaway while they still could.
Unfortunately, just as I was getting to that part, the fire alarm rang.
We piled out and met in the parking lot. I saw the other teachers taking role, so I began to go around and ask my kids’ names. This would prove to be my real first trial because I have a miserable memory. I came to one girl with a very unique name and an extremely quiet voice. After the third, “What?” another student told me her name. I still didn’t understand because I’d never heard anything like it, but I let it go.
Getting kids back into the school after the fire drill is a bit like herding cats.
You never know if one is going to dart off to the right, or into the bathroom, or into the wrong class. Fortunately, I had made enough of an impression on my students to get all thirty-three back into my classroom.
After the syllabus came the planned assignments, and there were a lot. Once a student finished one assignment, he or she was to put it into the tray, retrieve the other on my desk, and repeat the process for a total of five assignments. They weren’t difficult, but every time the linebacker or any other student would start to talk before their work was done, I would tap on their desk. This is cruel, I know, but I really did not want that boy in my class.
As fate would have it, he would turn out to be one of my favorite students.
After the assignments came the notes, and there were a lot of those, too. However, when the bell finally rang, the kids left with courteous parting words and without a chance of causing trouble.
The first class was over.
Block schedule means classes are painfully long, but there are fewer of them. Only two more to go.
As my planning period began, I sat down and scribbled out plans for my 3rd period class, making changes to ensure this one went more smoothly.
Unfortunately, this was not the case.
When the bell rang, forty-three kids poured into my class which only had thirty-three desks.
I had been warned that this would happen by the guidance counselor, but actually having them all wander around for a chair, then look at me, made me start sweating. The guidance counselor’s words rang in my ears. “Honey, I’m gonna put a lot of kids in there. Don’t worry. They will waiver out, and you will end up with only like fifteen or sixteen.”
That’s how it had always worked for the previous Spanish teacher, she’d assured me.
I kept my voice stern as my heart pounded while I directed the standing kids to free spaces on the floor. There would be no seating chart for this class until some kids had waivered out. Until then, it would be first come, first serve for the desks.
It would only be a day or two, I told myself, which couldn’t have been further from the trust.
I had kids sitting on the floor for nearly two weeks.
Not one of them waivered out of my class.
Finally, the guidance counselor removed ten kids from my class. Some students were sad because they apparently liked sitting on the floor. Fortunately, I’d gotten to know them well enough to determine who needed to not be sitting by whom.
At the end of the day, I had survived, and I was already calculating income from how I could survive working a different job. It wasn’t because the first day had gone terribly, but it was because of the stress I put on myself. There was no way I could survive doing this every day.
Fortunately, God had other plans, and I ended up falling in love with the job, not because I care so much about Spanish, but because I love the way I can have an impact on kids’ lives. I know it sounds cliche, but a caring teacher can really make all the difference. I’m thankful that I got to be that person for some of my students, and I hope I continue to do so.
If you want to know how I ended up at this job as an untrained, not very qualified teacher, you can read about it here.