Let’s go back to my first day as a teacher in the classroom.

I am terribly nervous. 

I stand at the door like I think all good teachers should do, and say good morning to my students.

I extend my hand to each and try to call them by name, although, even though I only have 9 students, I stutter on a couple of them. 

Next, we go out to the main room for an initiation on school etiquette.  A lot of is new to me, but it’s all old hat to my students and they squirm and fidget.  I have a small anxiety attack, wondering if I’ll need to call them out for misbehavior on this first day of school.

But we slide through it and make it back to the classroom.

I notice, peripherally, that the other classes are going out to run a lap and then, they must be coming back in to study.

I feel a little somehow about this, because I don’t have any study planned for the next hour or so.  Mostly because I’m afraid; I don’t know how to get started.  (By now I know a bumbling start is better than two hours worth of nervous babbling.)

I babble.

For two hours.

I see interest, high at the start, devolve into laziness, knowing glances, and sleepiness.

I try to bump the interest up by speaking in exclamation marks.

It doesn’t work. 

I have my eye on one fellow.  He scares me more than the rest. 

He’s a tough customer, the way it looks. 

He is macho.  He has clout.  He has attitude.

I know he comes from a hard place, and that perplexes me.  Should I treat him with soft gloves?  Should I treat him with tough love?   

But now it’s time for recess, and everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief and they spin out the door, pent up energy at having sat through so much drivel that they fairly burst apart at the seams.

I hear them say to each other, “What do you think of our new teacher?” 

“I dunno,” another says, “Seems like he talks a lot.”

We are back in the classroom, and I began the lesson presentation.  I explain things simplistically.  Way too simplistically in fact. 

The nervy kid, the one I had my eye on before, raises his hand and says, “We know all this stuff already.”

Ooookay,  I think.

So, I turn them loose.  They do just fine with that, until we get into the deeper stuff later in the month.

By now, I know that I wasn’t mistaken about my reservations regarding the energy of the one guy I had my eye on at the start of school.

He and I have locked horns a couple of times already.  Nothing serious, just enough to rattle me.  I’m scared of him, scared of all of these folks after all.

I keep pondering how to break through to him.

My first impulse is to curb his actions, to make it known who is in control.

I try this for a couple of weeks, but it doesn’t work.  He knows how to fight; he learned that at home. 

And then it hits me.  Right during math class.  Right during a sentence leaving my mouth about, well, something about math, I hope. 

Let him be the leader; let him show you how it’s done.  Begin by complimenting him and generally buttering him up.

I go with it. 

And everything changes.  Responsibility isn’t something he is used to, but it is his forte, nonetheless.

When he tells me, “This is how our teacher did it last year,” I tell myself to listen, rather than perceive it as a threat.

And, doing it like their teacher did last year, at least in some things, seems to enamor me to them. 

Soon, the whole class is pulling together, helping me to make this school system work.

Today, I really don’t know if that first class of mine got an education or not.  I think not.  I have to hope a higher power stepped in and was the teacher who knew what they needed and imparted it to them. 

But, neither could it have been done without each one of them, and their help.

Including the guy I had my eye on, and who has turned out remarkably well. 

Thank you, Jason. 

Written in Patrick Dugan’s