Remember the Patterns

The first week of school for a teacher is always rough. Your days are a blur and you finish utterly exhausted.

I don’t think you’re actually any busier than you were a week or two earlier; it’s a different busy, but not necessarily busier.

The challenge in that first week is to return to old patterns. Alarm wakeup, bell schedules, social interaction, 10:15 lunch, the “on” energy of teaching a lesson.

Your challenge between now and the first day of school is to try and list those patterns; you know them, even if you haven’t lived them the last few weeks. Remember the patterns, write them down, start mentally working through them. It will make that first week less whiplash and more reconnection with the familiar.