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As the early sun begins to rise from the horizon, I turn my classroom key to a series of clicking sounds as the lock’s mechanisms shift.

There I am, nervously pacing around the room as students slowly filter in. It’s the first day of in-person learning for the year and I don’t know who is more worried – me or the kids?

It was our open house two days before the start of school. I was excited and anxious about meeting my students and their parents for the first time. In just two short days, I was finally going to have my own classroom.

As a fourth grader, I remember being shuffled down to my school’s auditorium one morning for a performance from the fifth grade strings class.

“Remember that you chose to teach middle schoolers.”
Gabe, one of my students from student teaching, couldn’t have known how this small note would have me laughing, then sobbing, all sniffling nose and leaky tears, one year later.

At the end of my first year of teaching, I was asked to give one positive story that came from that school year. I could not come up with a single one. That shocked me.

Last June, my four-year-old asked me when Christmas would be here. I answered, “Six months.” “Six months is FOREVER!” was his response.

For teachers, the journey of stepping into their own classrooms for the first time follows much the same trajectory of bewilderment and exhaustion faced by new parents. Many enter the profession with the tools and knowledge required for success.