First day…

This blog entry also appeared on the TES New Teachers website.

As no one in particular once said: “Time is a deluding and enigmatic companion”. I’ll stroke my chin and nod in agreement with this, as it really doesn’t seem that long ago – though it most definitely was – when I was a little fella on the eve of his first day at a new school.

The week before, my mother and I picked up the smart new uniform: blazer, tie, and trousers with the right kind of creases in them. I must have tried the outfit on about three times a day in the run up – I used to think it made me look like a businessman, a sad and unglamorous ambition of mine back then.

My parents were anxious, I know, because the evening before the first day, they laid on a ludicrously sumptuous feast: mountains of chocolate cake; undulating vistas of Vienetta; forests of chocolate fingers. As I tucked in, my mother asked me questions: How was I feeling? Was there anything worrying me? What was I excited about? My answers were doubly incoherent: I honestly don’t think I had given it much thought, and I was stuffing a fistful of Wotsits into my mouth.

Now, twenty or so years later, I am once again on the eve of starting a new school.

Yes, I have got a suit. Yes, I have tried it on and yes, it does make me look like a businessman.

It also goes some way in making me look like a teacher.

But will I feel like a teacher when I walk down the corridor towards the classroom? Will I be treated like one once I arrive? Will I continue wanting to be a teacher after the school placement?

These are all questions which I am impatient to find out, and to which I hope the answer is a resounding yes.

After all, I certainly feel ready.

Along with the rest of my student teachers, I have been given copious amounts of sage advice by the course tutors. The lectures and tutorials have been stimulating, sometimes baffling, and always thought-provoking, and the essays we have written serve as superb introductions to a reflective practice we will be required to develop as our careers progress.

But practice can only go so far. A concert pianist doesn’t want to sit in a rehearsal room bashing out scales for his whole career.

I am excited, a little nervous definitely, and so so curious. I wonder how I’ll feel when I write the next blog. So long as the students remain positive, I think I will too.

Before that, though, the customary first-day-of-school feast. Mum?