How to be a First-Year, First-Day Teacher

Here are 17 sure-fire ways to make yourself stand out as a "hot-off-the-block" newbie. Use with caution, because these are VERY successful.

1. Wake up at 4:30 am the night before. Make yourself go back to sleep until 5:15 am, and finally just get up at about 5:25 am. Go ahead and make muffins with your extra time.

2. Get stuck waiting for a train to pass on your way to work.

3. Show up to school and find out you will have 3 more students than you currently have desks, which brings your class roster up to 33 students.

4. Find out that the copier machines are broken the morning of the first day of school. Do not have any of your syllabi or other handouts for the day previously copied.

5. Get a big blister on your toe from the high heels you are wearing to try to look older than your students.

6. When you are searching for the word "carafe" in class, have a student guess "witch's cauldron" instead, and wonder whether he's already implying that you're a witch on the first day of school.

7. Think that your 8th graders are done at 12:45 pm, so give them their homework assignment at 12:43 pm. Then find out that you had made a huge mistake and class isn't actually over for another 40 minutes. Obviously this means that you have lost control of your class because as soon as any teacher begins discussing the end of class in any way, the students hear "class is over, so pack up, please." Spend another 5 minutes just trying to regain their attention.

8. Find out that when you meant to sign up as an assistant to a club, you actually registered to be the teacher sponsor who is totally in charge. Oh, and the new mission statement for the club is due on Monday.

9. Forego lunch during your 25 minute break because you think you'll have more time during your 45 minute break after the 8th grade Connections. Then find out afterward that the lunchroom closed at 12:30 pm., which is of course over an hour ago. Obviously you did not pack a lunch, so forego lunch altogether.

10. Have multiple students ask you, "What? Are you like twenty-something?"

11. Accidentally call your current students by your former students' names. The students will not appreciate that.

12. Run back and forth under the blazing heat in the bus lane, trying to help students find their buses. Then find out that two students missed their bus completely. Of course you must wear hot black pants and closed-toe shoes so that you sweat as much as possible.

13. Print the wrong roster, so that you think the first three students are absent before even realizing it. Then when you quickly go to print the correct roster, find out that your computer is frozen.

14. Find out that your clock is two minutes fast. Therefore, when you tell your students the homework and allow them to pack up (thinking that there is only about 1 minute left), stand at the doorway with your students and wait for about 2 minutes until the bell rings, which you're never supposed to do.

15. Forget to make a few extra of the supplies after finding out that you have 33 students, since you had previously planned for only 30 students.

16. Leave the school feeling like you have absolutely no idea what just happened and your head is spinning around in circles, like on the movie Beetlejuice.

17. Remember that you WILL survive and that Day #2 will go MUCH more smoothly.