Jitterbug

 First day jitters?

I'm pretty much past that. This past week I sat in a room with my colleagues as we prepared to go out and be teachers for another school year. 

Because that's their job. The same job some of us have been doing since before the turn of the century. And yet, somehow, when the days tick down to just a few before we open for the business of shaping young minds, there is a tendency among many of us teacher types to panic. 

What if the kids don't listen? What about that new math curriculum? Will this group of parents read the notes I send home? In case any of these are concerns that you might be having and it's the night before your first day of school and you happen to be a teacher, let me see if I can help you out. Kids will listen to you if you're interesting. That's the way TV works. They listen to TV. When it stops being interesting, they change the channel. Don't be boring. About that math curriculum: Two plus two continues to be four, and half of the kids you tell this to will want to argue about it. Let them. It makes them better mathematicians. As for the books and the little teddy bear manipulatives you hand out on the first day because they're new, well, they'll be old soon and the mysteries that await them in the land of fractions, decimals and imaginary numbers are all on you. Not the new curriculum. The school district will buy new math books in a few years and they will come with tiny alligator manipulatives because they tested better in urban markets. Oh yes, and those notes you send home with your students? Remember how many of those you personally delivered to your parents when you were a student. How many of them lined the bottom of your backpack for weeks at a time, soaking up whatever moisture found its way inside that dark and scary place until, ta dah, I just remembered mom my teacher says you're supposed to come to a meeting this Tuesday at four. 

It's Wednesday. 

Better late than never. Another year of all that and more awaits just over the horizon and no matter how much sleep you get or you lose, it will be there waiting with all its triumph and tragedy. Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and before you know it you're halfway through the year. 

It won't be boring.