Beginnings

It being Labour Day here in North America and the beginning of the School Year on September 2^nd, I thought I would touch on the topic of ‘beginnings’. I don’t have these sort of beginnings any more.  I retired seven years ago and since then, in the words of Ian Crichton Smith, have become

“A vague wishless seaweed floating on a tide.”

About 15 years ago I was seated in my classroom early in the morning waiting for the first of my new intake to arrive. Like the rest of my colleagues, I had spent the previous week getting ready for the school year to begin. Even after years of experience I still was nervous about the beginning of the academic year. The last night of the summer was not a relaxed night’s sleep.

A shy face at the door as I looked up from my desk and an anxious mum gently knocking, she and  her daughter were a smidge early.  I mustered a smile, outstretched a hand and introduced myself.

“Hope you don’t mind, Mr. Davidson, but you are the first boy teacher that Emma has had and she’s a bit anxious.”  Mums have their beginnings too.

In my experience of this, the Emmas of the world, the nine year olds crossing a new threshold are not the nervous characters coming into the room. It certainly looked this way as she immediately wanted to find her desk and locker.  With my arthritic right leg, the hemi-facial tic in my left eye,  the paunchy stomach and the white hair, not to mention the wrinkles which time had ploughed , I was just happy to be called  a boy teacher. Boyhood in my case had slipped its moorings about 30 years previously and was unlikely to return to port.  That was a beginning never to begin again. Any rate Emma was happy and smiling, delighted with her locker and ecstatic about the little girl she was going to be sat next to.

The opening of the Edupak was going to be the busy part of the morning.  This package is what the parents had ordered from the school. It included binders, pencils, paper, note books and sundry other things essential to the smooth running of an educational programme. Of course, It was my job to ask the children to label the various binders, add the appropriate coloured note book to the correct binder.  For some this was an easy task, for others not so.  Certain characters were neat and done quickly, for others there was still a mess on the floor. The balance was to give the early birds an educational worm while I helped with the rest.

Lunch was always interesting on the first day. I was moved by the wee laddie’s lunch bucket which, when opened, revealed slices of cut apple in a smaller container and sandwiches cut in the shape of a heart and a loving letter from mum wishing her son luck. Such moments like that were always uplifting.

Being a fan of Malcolm Gladwell I always played with my ‘Blink’ moments during the school year.  As the year wore on  I really never needed to call the morning roll. I knew who was there and who wasn’t but always called the pupils’  register to which they were supposed to reply with a simple “Yes”. To me, that three letter word spoke volumes about whether that particular student had a good or bad start to his or her day.  It would be a signal to me that I may need to keep a special eye on Eric because he was not in the best frame of mind.  Dear Reader, it didn’t always work, of course. Sometimes I swooped down like a flock of seagulls on a spilled garbage can, only to cause alarm and shock to a very happy child who just wanted to go quietly about her school day without being bothered by some foolish adult who had it in his head that she had a problem.  She had started her school as a happy go lucky, joyous wee learner and left at the end of the day a nervous wreck because her teacher thought she needed special attention!? There are some who thrive best when they are left alone.

‘The problem is not the problem but the problem is your attitude to the problem.” Jack Sparrow

 There are some beginnings which are best left locked in the cupboard.

“If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders,”  Abigail van Buren

On that first afternoon we would play some form of ‘getting to know you’ games. ‘Ice breakers’ for want of a better term.  As the day neared its end, we would usually trek on outside the building and expend some energy, trying to send the children home feeling that they had just been given the new puppy they had craved for years. Smoke and mirrors was an early part of my teacher’s training.

There was probably a team meeting for Grade IV teachers after the children had gone home but most of the administrivia had crossed our paths the week before the children arrived.

There are always new initiatives for teachers at the beginning of the school year. I was always interested in professional development. Actually, Dear Reader, what am I saying? I wasn’t really interested. I was always interested in the lunch that was inevitably provided on such days. And I will admit I always tried to take at least one thing from such occasions some little gem that I could use in the classroom.  But sometimes, Dear Reader, sometimes I was beset  by flashbacks and found myself with a ‘new’ initiative ( What am I saying? All initiatives are ‘new’ except that some of these weren’t!  Head shake.) which had crossed before Davidson some decades previously.  

Sooo, pals o’ mine, if there is any point to this blog whatsoever, I suppose it is to empathise with all of you who, I think, remain friends and are now ex-colleagues because you will have a beginning again on Tuesday, 2^nd September. I had 43 such nervous nights, butterfly-fluttering, toilet-taunting mornings before the children arrived on their first day. Some of you will be the same, some will shrug their shoulders and wonder what the bloody hell I am talking about.

“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage, taking young children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” Emma Burbeck

But  I suspect, Dear Friends, that after about an hour of that new beginning, it will feel like you waved goodbye to summer an age ago.That last water ski across the lake, that last barbecued sunset, that last European cultural journey, all that was yours so recently now seems a decade ago. School, in short, will feel  like you’ve never been away.

I wish you all a happy and productive  beginning to your school year.

I am off up to Sun Peaks for a few days.

Thanks for reading.