The First Day (That I Didn't Go) Back

Today was a strange day. For the first time since I was three years old, I didn't go to school on the first day after Labour Day.

The nervous, excited feeling I've had for thirty straight years, butterflies in my tummy keeping sleep away the night before school starts left me alone last night.

All day, I eagerly devoured Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. Not only were friends and colleagues returning to school, but so were the tiny babies of many friends.

The first day of school holds so many emotions. As a student, I didn't love it. I was always overwhelmed by nerves and intimidated by new routines. I did, however, love the new school supplies. My favourites were fresh new binders, filled with crisp lined paper purchased at 19 cents a package and the occasional fancy set of pens or markers. From grade five all the way until my Bachelor of Education, I spent time during the first week decorating those binders, jazzing up my class schedule and making elaborate plans of how to avoid procrastinating, finally. The binders started off pretty, the schedules colour-coded and the procrastination always arrived.

As a teacher, the first day of school is awesome. Instead of snazzy new binders and hand coloured schedules, I have charts, tables, lists and plans on the Google Drive. Colour coding remains a necessity. I spend a lot of the summer planning for my new class and always over plan the first day. I have at least four times the amount of activities than I do time. Getting to actually see the names on my alphabetical (by first name) class list come to life as small humans is exciting. I remember how I felt as a student on the first day every year and do my best to calm nerves and make sure each and every student knows how happy I am to have them there.

The day always flies by. Huge amounts of paperwork magically appear. Very soon, it feels like you were never gone. The eight weeks of summer are a distant memory eight hours into a new school year.

My bladder starts its training process for retaining massive amounts of water until the moment that the children leave my sight.

By the end of the first day, my body knows that its holiday was over. The sleep lost the night before and the constant motion and attention. I drive home, one of those delirious car rides where you cannot remember a single detail from the moment you turn the ignition until you remove the keys. Attempting to get new information, like bus schedules, parent contact information and last minute changes to every schedule and routine sorted out, I inevitably decide to lay down on the couch to "rest my eyes". Four hours later, I wake up long enough to shove food down my gullet, tell Captain Handsome I'm way too tired to talk and head back to sleep.

Then, the learning adventure begins. Individuals who started out wary of one another slowly begin to merge into a community. I start to see lessons I have purposefully planned begin to pay off. I see lessons I painstakingly created fail magnificently. Students start to trust me and each other. Each morning, I am greeted with excited faces and each afternoon, there are at least a few people who don't want to leave.

No matter how chaotic and exhausting those first days are, they pass. My students and I become a team. We laugh, explore, discover, question and learn together. Sometimes we even cry together.

The first day of school always feels like a mixture of predictability and total freshness. I've been in a classroom on the first day for thirty straight years. I know that first day jitters wear off and real learning begins.

This morning, I didn't set an alarm clock. I let my body, not the chime that Captain Handsome hates on my phone, choose when to get me up. This morning, I smiled as I looked at the pictures and status updates shared by friends. I nearly cried when my teaching partner told me she missed our morning greeting. I felt wistful seeing photos of former students bravely traipsing off to new adventures.

I don't feel left out, though. Instead of returning to what has become a comfortable new start, I am in the process of a totally uncomfortable new start. Like the mix of emotions we all feel when starting something new, I'm reminded of the nerves and excitement I felt as a child starting each new school year. I have the time and freedom in a new city to explore some incredible opportunities.

Instead of spending the night before school staying up with butterflies in my stomach, I spent it in front of my computer, in the final stages of writing my first book. Sending the manuscript to my publisher in the middle of the night, I took a moment to realize that it's still a first day for me. It's just a little different than the last three decades of first days.

I don't know what this year will hold for me, but I know that I'm proud that I learned from EPCOTclass' motto last year of be brave. Instead of finding something comfortable, I've tried to find something totally different.

Who knows where I'll be this time next year. I certainly wouldn't be disappointed to be asleep on the couch, after an exhausting first day back in the classroom.

A Weird Challenge for Myself (Others Are Welcome!)

Dear sweet blog,

  I'm sorry I've neglected you for so long. It's been a busy an challenging couple of months (more on that another time, perhaps).

  I have some plans to get you back up and running and to get me back up and running as a blogger.

  First things first, clearly a blog challenge kept me on track. I will be putting together a blog challenge of my own sometime in the new year.

  In the meantime, I'm enjoying #WeirdEd chats, hosted by Doug Robertson, the author of "He's the Weird Teacher". I love the online community he's built and the opportunities to be weird, creative and innovative during his chats.

  I've started reading "He's the Weird Teacher" and am pretty sure that Doug actually lives inside my head. There are so many things he writes that match my own brain perfectly. However, hard as I try, I can't have a conversation with him (or anyone) inside my head.

  In a twitter conversation last night, several of Doug's Weird disciples started talking about putting together a book club. As always, I had to get things rolling and started a Google Doc for people to sign up and collaborate. Melissa Eddington started a Voxer group and I've started Vox-ing (is that a verb?) with her about how to make the Book Club work.

  Remember how I started this letter to you, dear blog, by saying that I needed a new challenge? I've come up with a simple one. Doug's book consists of 35 chapters. As you may know, most months have about 30 or 31 days, those numbers are similar, though not identical. If I were to blog every day for a month, using each chapter as a prompt, I'd blog my way through the book in just over a month. So as not to set myself up for too much disappointment in myself, I will be OK if I blog every two days or so and finish my self imposed Weird Challenge by the end of February.

  #ComCon, #WeirdEd, #L2L4L, feel free to join me in this challenge. Here's the inspiration for what I'll be blogging about:

1. Rockstar

2. Personal Responsibility

3. Teaching is Performance

4. Polar Express

5. Distractions

6.  Student Teachers

7. Philosophy on Discipline

8.  When the Students Are Hard, You’re Doing Your Job

9. Dressing Up

10.  How You Talk When You Talk About Your Students

11. The Trunchbull and *Deep Breath* Parents

12. Bodily Functions

13. Indoor Recess is Evil

14. The “E” Word

15. Bullying

16. Letters to Prison

17. Spelling Tests

18. My First Staff Meeting

19. What I Want Out of an Administrator

20. Learn from Fear/Inspire With Love

21. Getting a Tie and Losing My Music

22. Strange Things I Do in My Classroom (OR Things I Think I Might Have Stolen)

23. Special Guests

24. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

25. Tetherball

26.  Sympathy for the Weird Kid

27. Messing with Kindergarteners

28. Suck It!

29. There Are No Rules and Everyone Is Faking It

30. Reading Above Their Level

31. Substitutes

32. Dinosaurs and Fields of Study

33. Safe Schools

34. The System

35. Hello, Goodbye and Thank You

See you soon (I promise!),

Shauna

Being Brave: Straddling Divisions

I am entering my tenth year of teaching next week. I spent six years at a grade 4-8 school, teaching in the intermediate division (grades 7 and 8). This coming year, I had expected to be teaching grade 4/5. I've taught grade 4/5 twice (well, really only once and a bit because of being on medical leave three years ago), but taught 5/6 last year. Because of student enrolment, some of our classes had to be changed and I will now be moving to a grade 3/4 class.

I teach at an alternative school and one of our core tenets is multi-aged learning, so we purposefully plan for combined grade classes. There are so many advantages to teaching two grades in the same room. All students have built-in leadership opportunities and can model appropriate behaviour within the classroom; having a carry-over of students from year to year allows for consistency in routines; learning with people of different ages helps students understand that we aren't all on the same developmental schedule and people learn in different ways on different days.

As the first week of school approaches, I am planning ways to share routines and expectations with my new students. I read a post by Matt Gomez, a kindergarten teacher in Dallas, Texas, about his only class rule: "Be Brave". The idea of bravery ties beautifully to my own philosophies and the "recipe for success" my students and I worked from last year, "ADD EGGS" (accountability, dynamism, drive, engagement, gratitude, generousity and support) as well as some new ideas I have for this year about storytelling, experimenting and thinking big. I look forward to sharing the expectation of "Be Brave" with my new team next week. I am excited to learn what they think bravery is and then to reflect back on that later in the year and see how our ideas have changed and developed.

I try my best to embrace change bravely. When the chance to try something new came up, I reminded myself to "Be Brave" and take the opportunity to teach something entirely new to me. A grade 3/4 class was formed at my school and I'll be the lead learner with this group, starting next week!

In the past, the combined grade classes I've worked with have been within a single division (in Ontario, where I live and work, elementary grades are split into three divisions 1-3 are Primary, 4-6 are Junior and 7-8 are Intermediate). In the nine years I've been teaching, I've supply taught in all grades, but I've only had classrooms of students from grade 4 upwards. My students and I have always been in one division and worked with one set of colleagues in divisional activities. With half of my class in the Primary division and half in the Junior division, I will get a more clear picture of what is going on in the whole school. I'll also have a hard cap on my class numbers, a wonderful advantage and guarantee for a smaller class than I've ever had before! I talk a lot about how small class numbers make all the difference in education and now I'll get to test that out myself!

I know that children coming out of grade 2 into my room next week will be at a very different stage from the amazing Rainbow Eggheads who I said goodbye to last June at the end of their grade 5 and 6 years. I will be entering what I'm sure will feel like a completely different world from what I'm used to, but that will put me on even footing with my new students. We'll all be starting something brand new together. Bravely.