First Day

Most of us have had many first days. Whatever it is - starting something new is usually daunting. Even when we are returning to a school we have attended for years, we still feel those first-day jitters.

There is nothing quite like the first day at a brand-new school. I’ve experienced it once before - the first day at a brand-new public school. I had taught for years before this, so I wasn’t expecting the confusion and setbacks the first day in a new building and a new community would bring. Although we had plans set on paper, nothing went as planned. The buses got backed up for more than an

hour, no one really knew where to go for the fire drill, the lunch line took too long, etc, etc, etc. You can plan, but until you have experienced living in a space, you don’t really know what to expect.

The first day in a brand new micro-school with an educational philosophy that is new to all of us far surpassed all of my other first-day experiences. We are learning new routines, getting a feel for each other and the building, figuring out where things will go, and how we’ll communicate throughout the space. And on top of that, we are also figuring out how our learning will go this year. We’ve been planning and dreaming all summer - but what will that look like?

Everyone is accustomed to a teacher-at-the-head-of-the-room situation, so it is easy for all of us to fall back into it. And necessary, on this first day of establishing safety routines and the non-negotiables of living in our space. And yet - when it comes to other aspects of the students taking ownership of their own learning - old habits are hard to break.

The learners looked to me to solve a conflict, and while at times I tried to give them tools and support, at other times I jumped in via teacher mode. It was what we were all comfortable with. The beginning was a rocky mix of accepting the non-negotiable rules along with trying to experience the new order of being together and listening to one another. We interrupted each other, we lost our train of thought, we did bridges on the carpet, and had to be reminded that movement with our bodies can be as interrupting as using our voices.

Yet, in just a few hours, the new patterns started to emerge. We talked about waiting for pauses in the conversation instead of raising hands and looking to the teacher for the answers. They shared what was hard for them and what might hurt their feelings and they made plans to get to know each other better tomorrow so they’d be less likely to unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings. As they became more comfortable with silly games they also became more comfortable sharing their ideas about our space.

Our final work time of the day was getting into committees to work on proposals for rules and procedures for the school. Committees considered a dress code, whether or not to chew gum, whether should there be a student government, and if so, how would it run, and what should our device policy be. As they listened and recorded one another’s ideas they all became more animated about our space and our future together.

Today was not the perfect first day of school. We were all a bit uncomfortable and all had to stretch ourselves a bit to find our place. But it was the perfect day for the first day of the rest of the year. We needed to make mistakes today, talk over each other, get silly, and then feel how getting silly at the wrong times interferes with others’ learning. We had to identify our frustration with non-negotiable rules and think through how to live with those in order to reflect and take ownership to make the rest of the year even better.

I am so excited about where this group of learners is going to take us.