Back to School!

Wow! Another school year snuck up on me fast and goosed me a good one! Totally unprepared to go back. It's sort of a sad commentary on my life that I've been going to school for just about 40 years straight. You'd think I would have learned enough by now that I could move on to something else, but my life revolves around the cycle of a school year.

I've been teaching now longer than the years I spent as a student, and I've learned a few things along the way. Not much, but a few things. There is a famous book that shows that all a person really needs to know in life are the lessons that she learned in kindergarten. Well, for the teachers out there, all the really important teaching takes place in the first few days of school, and the rest is just biding your time until summer vacation comes around again.

Don't believe me? Let's consider some things. First, you have to lay down your ground rules, and without those rules and the consequences you'll enforce if the rules are broken, then your room will simply become a haven for chaos, and we all know that learning will not take place amid chaos. Secondly, the first few days of school are the only days in which your students are even remotely interested in being in school, so you have to grab them while they're even slightly attentive and pump them with as much knowledge as possible and just hope it lasts through the remaining eight months of the year. Thirdly, and most importantly, the beginning week or two of school is the only time of the year not interrupted by sporting events, pep rallies, assemblies, standardized tests and any other thing that cuts into your teaching time; so it is the only solid block of time in which to get some quality education accomplished.

Since I've been teaching so long, I've been assembling a guidebook for first year teachers. Mostly, it's a compilation of some of my venting after long days beating my head against the marker board in defeat, but it's intended audience is that group of first year teachers who start out their careers all rainbows and roses and end their careers nine months later looking like the walking dead with glazed eyes and missing pieces of their hair where they've pulled it out in frustration. Teaching is not for the faint of heart. It is a profession that will try the most decorated combat hero, and it's one where over half of those entering the field leave it in a mad dash for freedom and sanity at the end of that first year. So, since I'm a hard-ass and a smart-ass, I decided that I'd be a good person to give those eager newbies a dose of reality with some old-fashioned words of wisdom thrown in to help guide them through that arduous first year. Lord knows we need more good teachers out there -- after all, who is going to replace me in a few years?

Here are some of my chapter ideas to give you a taste of my warped sense of humor in action:

The First Day (or: Run Now Before It's Too Late!)
Lesson Plans (or: Those Things You Never Follow)
Problem Students (or: Every Student)
Extra-Curricular Duties (or: Free Time? Kiss That Good-bye)
Parent/Teacher Conference (or: One Night in Hell)

Hopefully you get the idea. Maybe some day I will actually finish my ranting and raving and actually edit what I've written and then get it published, so it can do some future first year teacher a little good and give him the motivation to return for a second and even a third year. After that, it's smooth sailing . . . uh, who am I kidding? 

Good luck to all the teachers out there! And remember when you're having a bad day, just take a deep breath and mentally (not aloud for all to hear) tell your students or your boss to Shtick This!