Leading up to the first day of school, I had a vision of energetic littles walking through my door, excited for a new school year. We were going to play a name game, do a quick run down of how morning meetings would go, enjoy a read aloud, and have an all-around wonderful day.
Reality: two kiddos cried, or rather sobbed, upon entering the classroom, and we couldn’t play the name game because we couldn’t settle down long enough to listen to directions (which became a trend for most activities). We did, however, get through reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, albeit with quite a few reminders to use our listening ears, and some of them seemed to enjoy the silly letters climbing up the coconut tree.
It only took a couple days to fall into the daily routine: straighten up the classroom, truck ride back home, dinner, shower, bed, wake up, catch a ride, attempt to establish classroom routines, rinse, repeat. But that “attempt to establish classroom routines” continued to be a bit of an ordeal. After two days of trying all different ways to model quiet signals and explain that in order to get to the fun we first have to listen so we know what to do, I had reached my breaking point. On Thursday’s last period, I spent a good ten minutes sitting in front of the classroom door watching what can be (generously) described as controlled chaos. I was at a loss and did not want to start shouting, so I took a break. Honestly, I didn’t care that the first graders were out of their seats, nor that one charming devil was throwing wet wads of toilet paper on the ceiling. No one was bleeding or crying. They could go crazy while I composed myself enough to reel them in.
By the time Friday morning finally rolled around, I was drained and more than ready for the weekend. I knew establishing routines was a lot of work, I knew first graders were a tough group, I knew being a teacher was challenging, but at that moment I was having a hard time thinking up reasons to put up with such hellions.
Lucky for me, however, I powered through anyways – because that’s when I had my best moment of the week, one that stood above all the lessons that fell apart, the students that had run out of the classroom, and the hours we spent practicing lining up.
It started with our read-aloud for the day – Five Little Ducks. For those of you unfamiliar with this story, it’s the tale of a mother duck with five ducklings that go out for the day but, when she quacks for them to return, diminish in number until no little ducks return. When she finally goes out in search of them, however, all five come back (we do happy endings in 1st grade).
When I read this to my class, we, of course, started by taking far too long to settle down. But once I began pantomiming the story, I started to get them. Then I asked for volunteers to be my ducklings, and (ta da!) – they were hooked! As I flapped around as the frantic mother duck, my patitos (ducklings) giggled and ran to and fro. When I sang “but only four little ducks came back,” my duckling actors, without any direction, gestured for one to stay behind and four came back. The finale entailed sad mother duck quacking for her babies and my five little ones rushing over for a celebratory-group hug.
We will get there. It’s going to be a long, hard road, but we WILL get there.
