My 39th First Day of School

On the first day of classes, I often wear the tie given me 20+ years ago by 8th grader Ryan Sullivan, purchased with British pounds that he borrowed from me during our class trip to London. It reminds me how funny middle school can be, and how grateful teachers and students can be for each other. I always start the day thinking about contingencies and gaps in my opening statements, and I always end feeling relieved, because the kids responded and it went well despite my over planning.

This 39th time, I thought I'd planned it just right. There would be a discussion of the difference between a teacher's grading students' work and a student's earning credit for work, how my job was to en + courage students to do their own best work for full credit. After a few minutes of that, we'd get into a "getting to know you" activity that involved themselves as subjects and some object of importance to them.


But the discussions bogged down, and time ran out. At least other years there'd been a frenetic amount of activity from my over - planned lessons. I was discouraged when my colleague Mary Ann asked how the day had gone.


She empathized. "I didn't want to face the crickets this year," she said.


Her approach was to create work stations for each of her objectives. At one, students removed strips of wood from a tower without the tower's collapsing; each strip of wood prompted a getting - to - know - you type of question that they answered on a single page - where other students would see what they liked in common. Another station required students to read a portion of the syllabus and to generate norms for the class. At another station, students wrote on Post - Its about positive and negative writing experiences they'd had, then stuck those in quadrants for experiences at school, at home, etc.


I didn't get all the details, but I get the approach. In fact, it's the approach I'd already planned for the second day. an activity that I'd tried last year, "Out of the Box," to teach that the essence of creativity is to find connections between things that don't seem to relate, and that it's fun; but you have to search the box to find things to connect! Our boxes this year will be books and life experience.


Another teacher I admire, Katherine, had also been stymied by student reticence. Reflecting, she understood that, while the kids want to make a good first impression, they're also scared of making a bad one, so "they're not going to put themselves out there." She welcomed Mary Ann's model.


I need to put up a Post - It to remind me of this for my 40th first day.