The Story Spark for this week’s piece was Firsts. The story spark for the original piece was Back to School. 

First Days

Originally written September 9, 2017. Revised March 12, 2026

As a teacher, I have had a plethora of first days of school. Each one leaves an imprint that sets up the tone for a year of learning. As a reflective practitioner, I kept journals every year that I taught. The night before each first day was spent writing about goals, fears, and expectations for the year. Not knowing what to expect from this new class always added to fears of what I might accomplish. My goals and expectations were always high. Then the year would begin.

The first day was always a day of introductions, learning names, and setting up our environment. There were many years that the first day would introduce me to some of the challenges I would face that school year.

My first salaried teaching job was as a permanent substitute 6th-grade teacher in a local school district. I started in February 1973. The kids already knew each other. School started at 8:30. My radio alarm was set for around 7:00. I started the day waking up to the radio program “Imus in the Morning”, where Imus jokingly announced the time one hour ahead of the real time. I started to panic, thinking I‘d be late for school. Luckily, I had a cuckoo clock in my room that showed the real time, so my panic lasted only a few minutes. 

When that first class came into the room, I was ready for them. Wanting to sound in control, I explained to the kids how “we could have a tough year or a great year, and do great things.” As I said this, I accidentally walked into a garbage can, knocking it over, spilling its contents on the floor. “Like kicking over garbage cans,” I said casually, without skipping a beat. I’m not sure if I impressed the students or not.

As a full-time teacher, I always started the year by learning students’ names. One of my favorite ways of learning names was sitting in a circle as each student said their name, preceded by an adjective that described them. As we progressed around the circle, the student whose turn it was had to first repeat all the other names that had preceded them prior to adding their own. I always started with “Happy Harvey,” and it went on from there. There was that first day in 1979, when all went well until we got to David, who said his name, “Dave the dick”, which, after a slight pause, he immediately followed with, “You know Dick Tidrow, a pitcher for the Yankees.” That was not what was going through my mind, nor most of the students’ minds.

There was a first time in 1993, when I had a student who was class phobic and wouldn’t come to the classroom. He hid in the nurse’s office until one of the students in my class went down to the nurse and coaxed him to the classroom. All was fine that first day, until the next day, when we had to do it again. On the third day, I said that if he refused to come to the classroom, I would bring the class to him, which I did. I took the whole class down to the nurse’s office and did a lesson there (I had prepped the nurse and the rest of the class to ignore him and just focus on the lesson). I had ruined his sanctuary. From that day on, he had no problem coming to class.

Having a selective mute in my class in 2002 also created issues in finding an activity for learning names. She would talk to any kid, but not with a teacher there, which included me. Surprisingly, she had no problem talking to teachers over the phone. 

First days were different for a few years when I taught 4th and 5th-grade inter-age classes. For each of those years, most of the 5th graders in the class had me from the previous year, which helped a bit. It also created some issues, that first day, since those 5th graders already knew all my quirks (as I did theirs), so setting up new rules and expectations, with some new 5th graders and all the new 4th graders, took a while.

First days continued until I retired in 2006. 

In 2013, I returned to teaching as a substitute teacher, working in the district that I had taught in for 33 years. I was a substitute teacher in lots of classrooms, so I got to experience several first days throughout the year. It did help, with my storytelling background, to have a good reputation with kids and stories to tell. The only difference now was that it was that much harder for me to remember names. 

I haven’t subbed at all since COVID, but I still have my goals, fears, and expectations whenever I go into a classroom, even as a storyteller. Some goals I meet, and others wait to be fulfilled as I continue to do the thing that I’ve always enjoyed doing –  being a teacher and learner.