The First Day of School

As a new teacher many years ago, I found the day before the first day school began to be one of nervous energy and a sleepless night. The classroom was decorated, class lists were at the ready, first day warm-ups and ice breakers all set up and conveniently located, I am ready. Bright and way too early the next morning twelve year old seventh graders file in on what will become the quietest day of the school year. We size each other up. The fellow slouching in the second to the last seat will be trouble, best learn his name quickly. The young lady smiling sweetly in the front row, and very eager to please. Aha, an ally, another name to remember. And so it goes. Teachers and students doing the beginning of the semester dance jockeying for power, acceptance, and ultimately in the teacher's case, control. Studies have shown that school children generally have two concerns in regard to their new teachers: will he/she like me, and how much homework will I have to do. This could ostensibly be generalized to the ESL classroom. In many ways students entering an ESL classroom bring with them the same fears that they harbored in their early school years. "Will I be able to do the work?" "Will the teacher embarrass me?" I've found that the more invested I am in my lesson plans and curriculum, the more difficult it becomes to make those all-important connections with my students. As teachers we do a delicate balancing act with a finite number of instructional minutes and the sometimes fragile egos of a diverse collection of English learners. I have come to the conclusion that the investment of these initial minutes in goodwill will pay great dividends down the line both in student attrition and overall success. Instead of doing the impersonal roll-call at the beginning of the first night of class, we will play a game. We will go over the syllabus, but only after I tell a little about myself. In the initial sizing up period, I hope students decide that this is a useful and safe place to learn English. It doesn't take long to make this choice. The experts tell us that in a job interview results are probably decided in the first two seconds. And it takes less time than that to remember to smile.