Well it’s official. I survived my first day on the job. It could have been much worse than it was, and it could have been much better. So I’ll settle for survived.
More importantly, today was Elijah’s first day of kindergarten. And let me just go ahead and tell everyone now, first day moments should be handled by dads. Now dads should take video and pictures, but dad’s need to be there. Why. Because the first day is a nervous day. And the last thing a kid needs on a nervous day is a weepy mom. I consider myself to be largely unsentimental (motherhood has increased this for me, but still, I’m not a weepy person) but here I was, driving Elijah to TC Cherry elementary school and getting choked up. Moms out there, if you have to go, realize that the camera is really a wonderful screen when the tears really start to well up. I couldn’t believe it really. He was at preschool all last year, and I thought I’d be fine, but nope – there were a few tears that actually escaped and trailed down my cheeks.
And as I got back in the car, I had to deal with the fact that it was possible that I was going to face what could easily be the worst day of my entire teaching career. Worse than the day when MaryAnn Cole, my first director, walked into my classroom as I was mocking something she said to the kids; worse than when that same Mrs. Cole jerked so hard on my door that it opened, though the deadbolt was fastened (though it is a very old school and the deadbolt is really more of a request for privacy than a mandate), and then caught two people chewing gum in my classroom. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a job that I didn’t look forward to going to in the morning. And it didn’t help that first day of school confusion had to be dealt with (schedules misplaced, schedules incorrect, blah blah blah) and some things that I could easily have dealt with – well were no longer my responsibility. So every question got asked, I’m sure 3 times. My response was always – You’ll have to ask the director– But in the long run, it will be really nice to be able to focus just on instruction for a while – I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do if all I have to do is teach – it’s been a long time since that’s been my reality – no college classes this semester – except for Joel’s but really I don’t care that much about his GPA – though I did sit for 2 hours and help him create a unit outline – not really too specific – but in the time frame, pretty good – as he’s also in ass-cover mode – better safe than sorry. And, of course, he’s planning to use it every year until he retires – but it’s a good lesson plan – he should use it a lot.
So that was my first day. Tomorrow is my second first day – as we’re getting the other ½ of our students in – no one has really yet realized that they have lost many more benefits than a choice of wardrobe (we went to dress code this year) – and to be honest – there’s still a big part of me that wants to see a huge event / explosion. I’ve long believed that the teachers of eleventh street really represent the students that we work with. And like our students, the teachers are testing – and though we may not want to push her buttons ourselves – we sure want someone else to do it and see what happens.
My goal remains to stay out of the way – so if the shit hits the fan – I’m no where near the blame zone.
