Rule #1: Be Prepared

My 1st Classroom Expectation which I gave my students at the beginning of the year reads as follows: 

.  1.      Be in class every day ON TIME and PREPARED.

·         Prepared (pri-paired), adj. properly expectant, organized, or equipped; ready: prepared for a hurricane.

·         This means: please have any and all items necessary to perform the tasks I assign in the classroom. Make sure you have a pen/pencil BEFORE entering the classroom, paper, any assignment, and your attention.

However, while gazing over this particular important part of my classroom rules, I realized this is almost an impossible task.  No matter how much I prepared to move across the country to Arizona, find an apartment, become certified, and get a job before the end of the summer there was NO WAY I could fully prepare myself. Yeah, I started calling movers, Department of Education,, and researched heavily into apartments in February before the pre-move Spring Break trip to Arizona. But how was I supposed to know it would take 6-8 WEEKS to get a background check... before I could even APPLY for my certificate? And here I am, interviewed, hired, school starts in one week, and I am still, unfortunately, certificate-less. I am SO lucky the wonderful administration at my school (and the district) was understanding enough to allow me to sign my contract with a simple verification. 

I then look at the other part... "on time"... on time... in the past five days I've been late to the only two important meetings I've had so far. One because I completely underestimated the time it would take to arrive at my destination, and the second because I was up late having nightmares about walking in the first day with thirty students looking at me expecting me to teach them something about Social Studies (but we'll get to that later). 

So, I guess I'm more upset with myself than anything. I haven't followed the first rule I EXPECT my 13-14 year old students to follow. And the further down I scan my Classroom Expectations I notice I haven't followed my fourth rule either... "NO EXCUSES". All I've done all summer is make excuses for not getting my certificate, excuses for being late and not realizing all along that I simply WAS NOT PREPARED. 

So back to this dream. Today my principal ironically asked (at the meeting I was late to) if any of us new teachers have had nightmares yet? After the obvious, “I didn’t know the phone number to the office” or the clever, “I showed up to school naked”, I sat silent. Realizing my dream wasn’t normal. Or it was, and nobody had the balls to pipe up about it. The worst thing I could imagine was having these children depend on me. They wanted me to teach them, waited, eager to learn, and I panicked. Am I really responsible for the knowledge and growth of these students? What if I’m boring? What if I make no difference in their lives at all? Or worse, what if one day they're writing a college paper claiming they want to be a teacher because of all things I did wrong? This is what I’ve learned is the WRONG WAY TO THINK. They warned me in my education program, teachers who put that much pressure on themselves to be perfect end up burning out. And I always scoffed knowing I wouldn’t be one of those people. But what if I do? I’ve only ever wanted to be a teacher. What if I burn out? What the heck am I going to do then?!?

Deep breaths.

Know you get why I slept in, huh. Teaching is an amazing career. It’s challenging, takes creativity, discipline, and most of all responsibility. I will learn from these kids this year just as much as they learn from me. I’ll be okay, I know it. Because the ability to teach is a gift, and I’m not going to throw it away. I’m going to look ahead, be on time, and most of all… be as prepared as possible for the joys and heartaches that are going to be this next 9 months!