Slice of Life Day One: My First Day of Teaching 43 Years Ago

Today starts the Slice of Life challenge.  The challenge given by Two Writing Teachers blog is: write a piece every day for the month of March and connect it with their blog.  That's it!  Here is my start for the month!

Since I am planning on retiring from 43 years of teaching after this year, I thought it might be good to collect stories from my years in the classroom.  Today I was thinking of my first day in the classroom. 

I started teaching in the first grade.  I had been living in Detroit when the school year started that year.  Then I moved back home to Indiana and was able to get a job teaching in Hamilton. They had an overload of first graders and needed to add one more class to give them four rooms.  My principal was a former teacher who was filling in the job of principal.  She had been a second grade teacher and the room I was to take over had been hers.

I remember having nothing to set up my classroom.  That didn't matter. Those wonderful women that I worked along side gathered things they didn't need and shared with me.  Their students made all kinds of things we could use for our bulletin boards.  When the students found out I was going to be their new teacher, they were thrilled.  We gathered and marched down the hall to the new room.

I was so young and so new to teaching that I can't even remember what I did.  I do remember the old Dick and Jane books were in the room but I don't think we used them.  I just wanted to help those boys and girls to love to read as much as I did.  I am not sure what our curriculum looked like or what our math series was, but I do remember loving those kids like crazy and being so thankful that I had my own classroom. 

I have been so fortunate to have the career that I love.  I have been so fortunate to still be in touch with many of my former students.  I love hearing about what they are doing and watching them become wonderful parents, workers and citizens.  If you have a job you love, you never work a day in your life.  Guess I have been playing for a long time!