My feet may be killing me and my voice may be a little worse for wear, but I have officially survived my third 1st day of school as a teacher. (And I only had to tell off one and a half kids in the process, which is a vast improvement over last year, when I told off at least 9 or 10 and had to switch around multiple schedules and get multiple students removed from my classes).
Funny story: at lunch, I was exuberantly bragging to every faculty member who would listen about how wonderful my kids are this year. “They’re basically angels!” I was gloating. “I mean, I had over 50% of my students totally prepared THE FIRST DAY! And they even said hi to me and asked how I’m doing! They offered to help! They did what they were told immediately! I actually–honest to goodness–had a student THANK ME at the end of the class period! It’s a first day of school miracle!”
Note to parents and future parents: teach your kids to thank their teachers. It just melts our skeptic little teaching hearts and makes us believe that there is hope in humanity after all.
I was over the moon at lunch–it was like my smile had been permanently tightened upwards with a screwdriver.
Of course, I quickly realized about two minutes into my last two periods that I perhaps had spoken too soon.
When will I ever learn that the pride cometh before the fall? When will I ever learn that the second I start gloating or bragging or praising something to the high heavens, it is bound to come back to haunt me eventually?
Of course, all in all, out of 150 students today, I only had two that were problematic at all. (True, I gave multiple warnings to the two and even had to have one kid stay after to have a chat with me about why he was being so disrespectful, but still—it was only two). By the end of the first day last year, I was ready to throw in the proverbial towel forever.
After today I was just tired. Read: not defeated—just tired.
Cuz hey—teaching may be exhausting work, but I’ll take two problem kids over the 45 I had last year any day.
Hallelujah.
(No, but really—I can’t believe how positive this year is looking already. Maybe I CAN do this teaching thing for life…)
