MY LAST FIRST DAY

I can't believe that September first will be my last first day. After twenty-six of them, I'll be retiring. Twenty-six, and I never stop getting nervous wondering what the day will hold. My nerves have quieted down some these days--I no longer have to stock Kaopectate in my school satchel anymore--but I still am apprehensive about who will come through those doors. One year I was so worried I had everyone come in two weeks early--to meet me, I said--but really it was so I could check them out. Every year I think this year's plan will make for a perfect day--never happens! I end up revising it for the following year, sure THAT one will be perfect. It won't ever happen because the truth is, every class is different.

I always like to have a good story to tell the first day. One year I read "The Goodbye Kiss," about a mama raccoon who tells her son when he misses her at school just to look at his hand, where she planted a kiss. At the end one of my little girls squeaked out a tearful, "I miss my mother." Then I heard another. And another. Pretty soon the class was full of tears and we had to pass the kleenex box around. I don't use that book anymore.

Another year I talked so long there was no time for recess. A parent told me later that her child came home complaining they never got recess. I make sure they do now.

Yup, kids have taught me to be a better teacher over the years. When I talk too long, they squirm. When I haven't modeled how to line up or leave for work time, I can guarantee they'll invent new ways to do them. And when I haven't taken the time to show them where the bathroom is, I learn I should have.

Parents are more predictable. Some of each type every year. There's the ones who can't let go; they stay and stay and stay until January(yes), or sit on the floor outside the door crying (yes, this, too, happened). There's the Tripod parent who enters the room with the kid glued like gorilla cement to his dad's/mom's pant leg as if this is Mars and the parents are leaving to return to Earth. And the parent who hands the child off with a firm, "You'll have fun, I'll miss you, and I'll be back to pick you up" and leaves (I admire those parents). Those parents let me do my job--holding one in my lap, keeping two by my side, setting a timer when his parent will return for another, all the while moving the class along according to my revised first day plan.

I've learned to think of that first day as a party, and I am the hostess. I try to have things out for the "early birds" to help with, as well as an activity or two to ease everyone's nerves those first moments in the door. Then the music gets turned on and the party begins.We meet at Line and, taking my cues from the children, I go through my Plan at their pace. It's full of variety--movement, information, music, information, practice, information, story, information, discussion, information--it resembles an ebbing tide, purposely designed to meet the young child's attention span-or lack of-and need for movement.

Unlike the rest of the year, I hold the children close and doing the same thing, with me as the focal point. There will be plenty of time for "all the places they'll go," according to Dr. Seuss, but for now I am building the foundation for which our class will become a community. I'd like to think that, after twenty-six years, the fact that I revise less and less for those first six weeks of school means I've been successful in creating a tight-knit group of caring learners. By the end of the year, they won't want to leave because they love it here (yes, it happens quite a lot). So trust that I know what I'm doing, and pass that trust onto your child so the first day will be as perfect as we can make it for everyone this year!