First Day of School - 8/16/06

Well, this was it – the first day of school. Summer is officially OVER. Though, the weather would have me believer otherwise.

I loved this day. It was only a half day, but it was good. The students were SO well-behaved! Of course, that could have been in my approach…

All of the students met at the church at 8:00am for a Grand Chapel. We had a word from the pastor, some prayer, and some redirecting of the junior high and high school boys in the corner. Each teacher was called forward beginning with Kindergarten and working up through high school.

I have the largest class in the whole school, in all of grades K-12. I watched the other teachers walk away with their little group of students buzzing around them in loose formation and quickly realized this would so not work with middle schoolers. By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, I’d have two students with broken legs, one crying girl, a missing child, and the side of the church building might or might not be on fire.

To prevent this, I waited patiently for my crowd of students to surround me, and then led them to the side of the meeting area where I got military on them. I told them to line up against the wall, 8^th graders in front and 7^th in back. I said something about a sloppy line, made them keep their hands at their sides, explained to them what about face meant, and had them do it. Once I had them pointed in the right direction, I made them start marching in place. Some kids were stepping timidly up and down… did that work? NO! GET THOSE KNEES UP! I said MARCH! Don’t look at me, look ahead! Keep marching until I say stop! Do not move ahead until I say so! I finally gave them the go ahead, and the whole junior high began marching single file toward the Level 3 classes. All the while, I was monitoring their form, making sure their knees were stepping high and reminding them that they would not rest until we got to the classroom.

Once there, I had them line up single file against the wall, and began laying down some ground rules. I gave them their seats, and began laying down more rules. For the first hour these kids were dead silent. Occasionally I would ask them to respond to a question, and they wouldn’t speak a word without slowly raising their hands. No blurting at all!

When I got to roll call, I wouldn’t accept a simple, “here” or “present.” I made them do it like they do in the strict Japanese schools. When I said their name, they were required to respond with a loud “HAI.” Some of the girls whispered, “hai” when I said their names, but I pretended not to hear until I got them shouting. It was glorious! They didn’t even TRY distracting each other!

Eventually recess came along and I noticed, but it didn’t register. I know the kids noticed, though. The bell rang to end recess, and one girl sheepishly raised her hand and asked, “Are we really not going to get a recess?”
Another girl started reaching into her bag to pull out a bag of chips as I responded,
“We’ll see…” and the girl put her chips back into her backpack without saying a word

I let about five minutes go by before telling them they could have a late recess. HOWEVER, I let them know that since the other classes were in session now, they had to keep it down and not distract them. THEY HARDLY SPOKE! AT RECESS! My whole class was hanging out in front of the door whispering to each other and softly eating their potato chips and sipping their water. They would look in the classroom every couple minutes to make sure they didn’t miss the time to come back in. It was awesome! I kept cool and straight-faced the whole time so they never knew it was all a ploy.

Earlier I had been warned, too, that the kids will want to bring pillows to the classroom to sit on. The teacher last year let them, and it was a disaster. It was distracting, and once she said yes she couldn’t take it back. One girl had the nerve to slowly raise her hand and ask, “Can we bring pillows?”
“PILLOWS? Why would you want to bring pillows?”
“To sit on.”
“No, you can’t have pillows! I don’t get a pillow to sit on, so neither do you. You will just have to sit in these hard wooden chairs. By the end of the year you’ll all have flat bottoms. Besides, I don’t want you to try to use the pillow to sleep in the middle of class or break out into a pillow fight. Sorry.”

It wasn’t mentioned again.

I then told them that I wanted to send a picture of the class home to my family in the United States, and that I was going to take their picture. I asked if anybody had any objections, making it as clear as possible that I would seriously honor that. One girl said as long as she didn’t look bad in the picture, it would be okay. So I showed her. Before taking the picture though, I had them all take our their notebooks and pens and “look studious.” So, they did….

All day it went like that. What I expect of them, what I WILL NOT tolerate, and what the consequences will be when they cross that line. At the end of the day, they had a list of things they needed to bring back and an even longer list of expectations. They took me so seriously, which is really good when you consider that I explained how I won’t tolerate put-downs, teasing, or anything of that nature.

After school, one of the men on the school board came into my classroom to talk about the day…he had already heard the report from his son – my student.
“What did you say today?” he asked me.
“Why’s that?”
“My son told me, ‘Dad, the class was so quiet, if a mouse ran across the room you could hear its footsteps!’”
“Oh really? I wonder why…”

Apparently, that’s atypical for this group of students. It was only the first day, but I think I saw the effect I wanted. On their way out, the kids all lined up at the homework calendar on the wall by the door to write down what they needed to bring/do by tomorrow. AWESOME!

Don’t think I was horrible all day though – I’m still me. I can’t help being light hearted and had to hold that back, though I still had them laughing a few times and shared enough about myself that they have a sense of who I am and how we can get along in class. It’s always like this, tough in the beginning, really close relationships by the end of the year.

We’ll see what the rest of the week brings!