The day my daughter was the born was the first day of the rest of my life. I knew the one thing i could count on was the support of my family. Question 5 b: he coloured deeply under his sunburn, then grew pale answer 5 b: the narrator was astonished to see that boys worked hard day and night and yet lived meagerly. On the first day of school, my assignment was substituting for a kindergarten teacher.

Why was i substituting? mercer county, west virginia, had hired me two and a half months earlier. Soon after my arrival, the auditor informed the school board and me that we had a financial deficit of two million dollars, which had to be resolved by the end of the fiscal year. One idea that we adopted was that administrators would substitute teach at least one day a month to save on the cost of subs. But after an hour as the kindergarten sub, i silently cursed the person who made this ridiculous suggestion. The day started to go downhill when the third child stepped into the classroom and started to cry for his mother. While i turned to comfort him, others arrived, each one seeming to require 110 percent of my attention. I succeeded in getting 23 of the 28 children to tell me their names so i could give them name tags.

That didn't seem to matter most of these little people did not respond to their names anyway. My opening line to the whole group was something crazy like, let's all get in a circle. It immediately became obvious that most of these children did not know what a circle was, much less how to get into one. As an alternative, somehow i was able to get all but one girl to sit on the carpet.

Exploratory Essay on Child Abuse

I realized that most children did not come to school hardwired with school routines. As i scrambled to find something productive to do, it occurred to me to read to them. Children interrupted my reading with their own unrelated stories of whatever popped into their heads, with several children talking at the same time. A few adventurous explorers simply ignored my reading and wandered around the room.

My mission switched to praying we would all survive without any noticeable physical damage. I was like arnold schwarzenegger in kindergarten cop before he found a whistle. The teachers at that school laughed and retold the story of the superintendent's first day for the rest of the year my contribution to raising staff morale. A few weeks later when i visited that same class, some of the kids called me teacher and hugged me as if to express their forgiveness. I gained some new insights about just how much skill it requires to teach kindergarten. I served as a substitute for 15 more days that year in classrooms where the students already knew the procedures. art stellar, former superintendent, first mercer county public schools, west virginia it was 1993, and i was thrilled to start my career as a teacher.

This was a second career path for me, after spending several years in business and several more at home raising twins. Using every preparation strategy i knew harry wong would have been proud , i had painstakingly crafted a series of engaging activities for day 1 of year 1. I had lofty plans to bond with my new 8th graders, introduce them to classroom protocols, and stir their excitement for science. Instead, my carefully chosen sponge activity was greeted with a chorus of this sucks and i ain't doing this. Nothing in my training had prepared me for a response like that, but after a moment of internal panic, i forged on. The hour wasn't smooth by any definition, but i managed to meet some of my objectives. With the help of several wonderful mentors, i soon learned more strategies for working with students who exhibited hostile behavior.

But i'll never forget that first day, the one that closely resembled the bad dreams we all have prior to the start of school. karla browning, school district consultant, lansing, michigan after five years of waiting for a child, i was finally pregnant. As august rolled around, my tummy became round, but i still had 18 weeks to go until the expected birth.