Cloudy with a few showers. High 73F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..
Cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
It’s the first day of school and classes have ended for the day. I walk to the office, making my way around the last remnants of animated students standing in small groups. The energy of the bulk of them still resonates throughout the building.
It’s only a half day, but I am oddly tired and mentally drained. As I walk, I hear lockers randomly shut here and there as students pack up to go home for the first time this year. I walk into the office, which is refreshingly air conditioned, and drop off some student fees paid by one of my homeroom students. While there, I stop and talk with our school accountant, Jennifer Hannah, whom we affectionately call Bim.
The first day has ended and there is a sense of ease as the first hurtle of the year has been jumped. As a result, it is nice to slow down and simply have a conversation instead of defending the new cell phone rules against my frustrated homeroom. I explained to my students today, who seemed particularly intent on debate, that it’s not the students against the teachers, it’s all of us against them…the government and aliens. Sadly, and very few know it, we are on their side and it is us against the world: Standardized testing, finding a good job, competing for that job, competing for scholarships, getting into college, and acclimating socially and intellectually into adult society.
Regardless, Bim and I discuss the anticipation of this first day. I explain that after almost two decades of teaching, I still feel a sense of apprehension as the door closes to my classroom, and 20 or so kids look up at me expectantly. For the teacher, that moment is the constructed moment that begins the rest of the year, and as you begin to speak, you know that it is the first moment of thousands in the year-long journey to come. It’s surreal.
When I close that door, the classroom that is my ship comes into being. That first day, as I look at the class, I wonder, “Who makes up the people on the journey we are about to undertake for the next year?” I look at their anxious faces, some indifferent and some gloriously curious, and know we will travel over and through novels and essays, we will submerge in conversation and explore topics we do not even know exist yet as the year unfolds. Time is undoubtedly our tumultuous sea and often our assignments are subjective and changing according to the storms ahead. It is an adventure.
Anyway, as our conversation continued and I confessed my first day jitters, Bim went on to say, “Well, maybe that is a good thing.” She elaborated on the fact that I was still excited on that first day and perhaps that is the relevant factor. Sometimes your coworkers simply make you feel better.
Outside, in the hall, I can hear the whooping and hollering of some random students as they trickle out the door. I smile and thank Bim for her time. I head back to my room through halls that are a little emptier, and chart my lessons for the coming days, working on them again, wondering what will engage those intrepid youth and what will not.
Brian Theodore is a language arts teacher at Corbin High School and lives in Corbin with his wife, who is also a teacher at CHS. He can be contacted at Theteachersdesk.theodore@gmail.com.
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