The First Day

Ok so my first day of my first year was actually pretty good. Of course there was one horror story though; its hard to make it through the first day of the first year without one (I hope). So this morning in the midst of the chaos of having all of my students come in, trying to meet them all and show them where to put their bags and get them breakfast and sit them down and make sure they didn’t spill or cry or pee their pants, this woman walks in and very assertively tells me that the little boy with her, whom she calls Mohamed Mohamed, is in my class. Her assertiveness implied to me that she worked at the school and was part of the administrative team (that I apparently hadn’t met yet?) so anyways I didn’t think much of it. So this entire day Mohamed Mohamed is with me in my class and I am referring to him as Mohamed M (to differentiate between the other Mohamed’s in my class)… and its not a big deal. Then towards the end of the day it kind of dawned on me that because this boy was not on my attendance I didn’t have any of his information or his bus number, and therefore didn’t know what to do with him at 2:05 when we walked the kids out to the bus (it was like 1:30 at the moment). So I made a call to the office to ask where I should send this “Mohamed Mohamed” and suddenly my good first day of teaching turned really bad really quick. “Which Mohamed Mohamed do you have?” a panicked voice asked from the office. I wasn’t sure as all I knew was some lady brought him to me and told me that was his name. I was told to send him down to the office immediately so they could figure out who this boy was and what they were to do with him. I had no information on him, no bus number, no phone number, nothing. All this to say it wasn’t looking good. Meanwhile I had to walk my other students out to the buses (having them all hold a rope in their hands while doing it mind you…) and this whole time I am preoccupied thinking about Mohamed Mohamed hoping they had gotten a hold of his family. All of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I see one of the administrators of the middle school; walking this child, by hand, to each individual bus (of our 24 buses) asking any of the kids if he looked familiar to them. This was suddenly a much bigger deal than I had anticipated. Then once I was done dropping all of my students off I could still see my little guy being escorted around… and by this point all of the teachers are done and they are all waiting to go in but this boy is holding EVERYONE up. All of the 24 buses and staff. Needless to say it felt like the whole school was staring at me thinking, “What were you thinking having this unidentified child in your class all day?” I hope this is one of the most humiliating and scary moments of my teaching career. After all of the buses left we discovered that his name is in fact Mohamed Mohamed Feral (or something like that) and he WAS in fact in my class on my attendance sheet- so we did have his information! So the administrator of the middle school brought him home and all ended well.

Besides that mess, the day was pretty good. I think I said, “Please sit down, criss cross applesauce” maybe 150 times, who knows maybe even more. I know I said it at least ten times in a row to this one girl who was staring me as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. (I am pretty sure she did, and I was motioning it to her as well and showing her a picture of someone sitting down.) Ok so its 9:23 and I was going to go to bed at 9:00 so I have to sign off for the night. I am sure there will be much more time to process and many more thoughts and stories in the days to come. Long story short- I had three kids crying today bc they missed home, I made the kids sleep on the floor without their mats because I didn’t have time to give them to them, they only got 4 minutes to play outside because it took us so long to get through the bathroom, they did not know how to even wash their hands and I had one girl drinking out of the sink, I have cards with pictures of kids having a closed mouth and sitting on the floor and sitting in a chair that I point to when I want them to do something which will most likely save my voice as a teacher… and I am excited for another chance to try again tomorrow. Hopefully no chaos tomorrow with Mohamed Mohamed. That is my goal! I am learning to coin this phrase for teaching, “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I will try again tomorrow’.”