The 5 Best Things About the First Day of School

Why Is it That English Allows Capitalization in Titles for Some Small Words But not Others? Is there a Rule?

Moving on, from Mama Kat, well, the title is already up there.

From Mom's point of view, the five best things about the first day of school are:
1. The promise of a good year, the slate wiped clean, the teacher doesn't know I'm a bitch yet. This doesn't apply at our school, however, because Sophia had the same teacher for kindergarten and first grade, and now has the same teacher for third that she had for second. And next year Maeve with have the kindergarten teacher (most likely). Everybody knows my game. But I could conceivably see this as an advantage.

2. I have to wake up in the mornings. Turns out, I'm a morning person. But I love to sleep in. School makes me get up and get moving. And then I don't stay up until 2:30 in the morning clicking on I Can Has Cheezburger and wondering if my Australian and Kiwi blogs are updated yet.

3. Seeing all the other moms and dads again for the first time in 3 months and remembering that, yes, I do like these people.

4. Watching Sophia (Maeve too but it's been more palpable with Sophia) interact with the same kids from last year with shy waves and "hi". Maeve gets in their faces, but Sophia observes from a distance. It's a sweet moment of awkwardness that is gone by the second day when she, too, remembers that yes, she does like these people.

5. Watching Sophia (three years in a row now) go into the main part of the classroom and plop down in the circle, right next to the teacher. She gives this smile, please please like me, and I see myself from 26 or 27 years ago.


The 5 best things about the first day of school, from when I was a student:
1. Wondering if my desk and I would get along. Would it be the right height, would there be enough room to stash my books? Or would this new school (it was often a new school) have those kinds of desks? Hoping I'd get a good place to be was always present.

2. The smell of new pencils.

3. New textbooks, cracking them open for the first time. New notebooks. Later on, spending part of the morning covering textbooks with brown paper bags or the mass-produced advertisement-emblazoned book covers. Deciding how I would label each book.

4. A clean classroom, a teacher who didn't look tired, maybe it'll be a good year (except for 5th grade and 10th grade, it was always a good year).

5. Knowing that no real work would get done that day. At all. It was all syllabus distribution and classroom rules and book covering and desk rearranging. Almost as good as the last week of school.


As a teacher, the 5 best things about the first day of school were:
1. The challenge to learn everyone's name by the end of the day.

2. Letting kids pick their own seats, seeing how that panned out (it almost never worked perfectly). Watching what friendships were already formed, which ones might, and what I might have to look out for. Writing it down so I could look back in October and see if I was right.

3.. Again with the clean slate--even if Pete had been a annoying little so and so last year, maybe this year will work better. Even if Mrs. K told me to watch out for Thuy and Thiky or Ian and Eric or Bao and Mary--hoping that maybe for me, it would be ok. By the time Mrs. K was telling me these things, it was always ok for me.

4. I enjoyed handing everyone a math book and telling them that by the end of the year, we would have completely finished the book. Seeing the looks of disbelief: "we've never finished a math book before." Telling them that even with taking every Friday off for either a project or a test, we would still finish the book. We always did. Ooh--and I liked explaining my totally outcome-based education plan for grading. Basically, even if you make D's and C's and F's at the beginning of the year, if you're making B's and A's by the end, you'll make a B (or an A) in the class. Math is cumulative. Work hard and learn and don't be burdened by your past failures. This always caught the attention of a certain group of students--mostly slacker boys and low-confidence girls. Always my favorites. Both years I taught math, I had to go to bat for them to the principal who did not understand how Jeff or Joe or Ann could have a 75 average first quarter and a 92 average second quarter and how that turned out to be a 92 for the semester. It doesn't average out, she'd tell me. But that's not the point of learning math, I'd say back, we are preparing them for high school success. Well, I hope no parents complain, she'd half-threaten. Then I'd try hard not to give her a you are too dumb to live look and go back up to my room.

But that part wasn't on the first day.

5. The very best thing about the first day of school when I taught, whether at Simmons or Andrews or Joan's or Pius, was sitting alone in my classroom at 7 in the morning watching the sun rise over the houses. At Andrews it was over a park and a corporate-style pond with geese. At Joan's it was peeking through the pin oaks between my classroom and the church. At Simmons and Pius, it rose over red brick and asphalt, green trees and city streets. It was always some kind of hopeful moment, an unspoken prayer, an alignment of past and future as I listened to myself breathe, clearing my mind for the day and year ahead.

Good luck to everyone! Have a good year!