The Very First Day of School

I barely remember the first day of school. Seasoned teachers tell me that this isn’t uncommon. Still, I find it disconcerting considering the effort it took to get to that beginning. But like many firsts, it was relatively uneventful and utterly forgettable. Except that it was my first day and they were my first class, so I can’t forget them.

I don’t remember exactly what I wore, but it was some attempt at professionalism, some asserted try at dress slacks and dress shoes, with my hair pulled back into a tight ponytail hopefully impressing upon them that I was serious. Serious. They wouldn’t overwhelm a serious educator. They would have no other choice but to respect me. I wanted to appear as someone who knew what she was doing. Someone quite unlike myself.

I barely slept the night before, but as I readied myself in the morning I realized I was not tired. I was prepared. Lesson plan ready, paperwork in order. Everything was in place, or the best that it could be under the circumstances I was handed.

The classroom I was assigned was of slightly lesser quality than dismal. It was on the fourth floor of an ominous brick and mortar Bronx monstrosity that probably should have been burnt down in 1965. Still, the teachers of our tiny school (we took up only half of the fourth floor) made the best of it and I had one of the better rooms. It had served as the old school’s art room, twice as long as it was wide. It held weird cupboards and shelves stuffed with oddities: faded scraps of construction paper, unfinished paintings from past students, futuristic art posters form the 1970s, homemade dream catchers, yardsticks, tongue depressors, reams of green paper. I only had one day to bring this into some kind of order.

I threw out bags and bags of debris and kept anything I thought might be useful someday. In terms of supplies, the school provided very little. The day before classes began the Assistant Principal handed me a manila envelope filled with my new school year supplies: one pack of pencils (12), one box of chalk (I had a white board on stands in my room), one board eraser, one pack of red pens. Later they also gave me a packet of faded construction paper to help me decorate my room.
I had nothing but a room full of junk and practically no money considering I had yet to draw a paycheck. I began to frequent the local 99 cent stores in the neighborhood, buying generic Windex to clean the desks, paper towels, a broom and a dust pan, a stapler, and other odds and ends needed to form-- if not a sound classroom environment---at least a clean one. All the new teachers worked feverishly, scrubbing desks, emptying out old lockers, hanging paper. We could not make up for the peeling paint, the graffiti lining the buildings leading up to the school, the lead in the water of the drinking fountains, the lack of air conditioning in a hot building, but we made every effort possible to build a respectable place for students to learn.

There was still one thing that had me worried. Over the summer I did a brief tour of student teaching. I was placed in a middle school in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx, and as I watched the teachers in action, I noticed that the most effective teachers loved their classes. They loved them. This is not to say they were blinded by love, or that the teachers were not occasionally cranky, impatient, or exasperated. But they had a spark, a connection of light with the kids, and the children shared this understanding that the teacher wanted what was best for them. I learned that teaching was about love.

During the scrubbing, organizing, decorating, I began to think I might not be capable of loving my class. Why did I think this? Did I underestimate myself? Did I not trust them? Did I not think that they were lovable? I guess I figured I would be locked in that sweltering classroom with 35 urban youths who would view this white woman from California as a pathetic do-gooder who knew nothing about teaching and who would then make every effort to ruin my precarious teaching career. This is what kept me up the night before school started.

And then it started. I remember them sitting in their seats, staring at me. I soon found out that many of them were terrified to be at this old high school, as its reputation in the neighborhood was very, very bad. I, on the other hand, was surprised to find my power as a teacher. When I asked them to write something, they wrote. When I asked them to read something, they read. I must have been yammering on a mile a minute, because I ripped through two days of lesson plans in one day. After lunch, a tough girl popped her gum loudly in class. Calmly and clearly I said, “Please throw your gum away.” She snickered. “Throw it away,” I restated. All the fourteen-year-old eyes were on us, to see what kind of teacher I would be—soft or hard. I repeated myself once more, “Throw it away.” She popped off, “I don’t have to do anything, bitch.”
Bitch? She called me a bitch? After I spent so many days, so many months, cleaning, studying, sacrificing myself for this class, she calls me a bitch?

I forget what I said after that, but I hope I didn’t say much. I sent her to the dean’s office, limped through the rest of the day. Somehow I got home, and I cried and cried myself to sleep. I knew I wouldn’t love them.

The next day my nerves were not rested. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept waiting for the students to revolt, squirm out of control. I did not know what to do other than just keep working. When one lesson was finished, I’d start another. Free time was my enemy. Finally, on Friday afternoon, I had them write. I hope I didn’t have them write something as trite as “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” but it might have been exactly that. When our last bell of the week sounded off, I colleted my things and slunk back home to grade them and do lesson plans for the upcoming week.

I finally set aside time to read my students’ essays on Saturday afternoon. The afternoon was hot, as no one had told the late summer that school had started. I read their papers. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t utterly shocked at their writing skills. Most could barely pound out a paragraph, and many of the students declined to turn in their work at all. But, as I read, I began to learn something. I began to meet my new students. I began to see them as individuals. And then there was Eddie’s essay.
Eddie was 16 and in the ninth grade for the second time. He had a skimpy mustache he was proud of, liked to dance, and liked school despite the fact he did little work. His handwriting was small, and carefully printed out. Few students knew how to write in script.

But Eddie told me a story about his first love. He wrote about how he met her at his job, and how pretty she was. He got her phone number and they dated for a year and a half. She was “his girl” for a long time. Then, she started spending time with her friends, and left him behind. He wrote, “I still think we are good friends. I hope she thinks so.”

And something happened to me. I understood Eddie. I had been a teenager too, and I related to his story. And I was so thankful to him for sharing his story with me. So overwhelmed that he trusted me with his story of his first true love. And hen I looked at the other students’ papers, and I realized that they all trusted me a little bit. And I liked them. In fact, I loved them. I felt dizzy, realizing that I did love my class. I held their papers to my heart, and breathed in.