How to Survive the First Day of School - a survival guide for teachers

The start of a new school year is traumatic, not just for students but for teachers, especially the new ones.  Not only are they in a new situation with new responsibilites but sometimes they are just a few years older than the students that they teach.  They also have the same teaching responsibilities as experienced teachers. So I give you a few pieces of advice before I head off to the first student day tomorrow.

1. Be Polite 

This is to all school staff.  You are not the most important person at school.   Be especially nice to the secretaries, janitors, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers.  They deal with many of the same issues that classroom teachers do and they clean up many of the messes that occur. They can also provide a great deal of help.

2. Wear Comfortable Shoes 

I cannot stress how uncomfortable school floors are and as a teacher you are on your feet most of the day.  The first few years you probably can wear really cute shoes (hey I am a girl, that is important) but after a few years of teaching you really need the comfortable shoes.  It is amazing how much your mood can be tied to how your feet feel.

3. Emergency Bag 

Have a small bag in your desk.  In it have your own emergency supplies.  For example I have a nail file, some make-up, deodorant, pony-tail holder, band-aids (Scooby-Doo is my choice it is much better than the boring school ones that are for students) and some change.  As a teacher you would be surprised the number of times that you can get stuck at school and need these items.  Emergency drink machine money comes in handy.

4. Emergency Food 

The first day the cafeteria will be insane and no one will have enough time to eat their lunch.  There will be other days when things will happen and your lunch will be cut short or you could just be really hungry.  Some ideas to keep on hand granola bars, soup, shelf stable meals, and crackers. These keep for weeks if not months and if you are like me they come in handy on the days you are running late and leave your lunch packed on the counter at home.

5. Ask For Help 

This should be easy but as a teacher we often feel that we should know everything and we forget to ask.  When you don’t understand a procedure please ask your neighbor, the teacher down the hall, the secretary, but ask someone.  It is ok not to know all of the answers. But you should know where to find the answer.

6. Arrive Early 

For those that know me, they are all laughing, I am rarely early to anything.  But traffic on the first day of school is new levels of horrible.  You have to leave at least ten minutes earlier than normal to get there on time.  Why?  Becuase almost every parent wants to drive their child to school and half of them have no clue how school drop offs work.  Traffic will be backed up onto the road in front of almost every school.  

What other words of advice would you give to new teachers to help them start the year?

The Horck of Death or The Hairball

Having a cat means one very disgusting thing, hairballs.  Well, if you have a hairless cat (or as I call them, nakkid cats) maybe you don’t have a hairball issue.  I have short haired cats so I didn’t think that hairballs would be that big an issue but I was wrong.  I have, well the cats have frequent hairball issues.

One cat, Cordelia, almost always has hers on the tile floor.  It is easy to clean up and remove.  OK, I admit to making both gagging and eewwy noises if I clean hers up and it is still warm.  But the other cat, Malcolm, inevitably has his on the rug, the couch, or bed.  They are hard to clean up.

I know that he does that because one night, he was asleep on my legs when the horcking noise combined with the jingling of his collar, woke me up.  Imagine, just awaking from sleep, rising to a sitting position, just in time to see your cat horcking up a hairball on your feet.  Then what does he do, he blinks, rolls over away from the mess, and goes back to sleep.  So I do the same and clean up the mess when I get up in the morning.  I agree with Malcolm on this, never ruin your sleep no matter how slimy the problem.

So I decide to deal with the hairball issue.  I call the vet and get the recommended hairball medicine.  The hairball stuff comes in two cat approved flavors, malt or tuna.  He loves tuna, so I get that flavor.  They recommended that if he won’t eat it from the tube to smear some on his face.  It didn’t work.  Imagine, the seventeen pound tubby tabby running through the house shaking his head making his collar jingle.  Then the dog decides to get into the action. She chases the cat down to wash his face. I give up for the night.

The next day I call the vet and explain what happened.  I was then told to put some on his foot.  He would wash his foot.  Yeah, that worked.  What did he do? He ran through the house shaking his front foot and crashing into things.  So again, the dog washes the medicine off of him.  

I go to bed wondering how I can get the medicine in him?  When I get up the next morning I see the tube of hairball medicine in the living room. It is chewed up and empty.  So, the cat that gets lost in the house and forgets that his claws retract figured out how to get into the upper cabinet and only knock out the hairball medicine which the dog eats.  Just in case you were wondering hairball medicine works on dogs.  But eating the tube and its contents causes a truly disgusting issue that required yet another call to the vet.

So what was the new recommendation. Hairball formula cat food which according to one review, “Got rid of all hairballs”.  Ha, that so did not happen in my house but the other recommendation was mixing a dab of vaseline in a small amount of canned cat food.  The hairballs have decreased but every once in a while in the dead of night or when I am in the bathroom I hear the eerie sounds of the horck of death and I know that I will have to deal with the disgusting remains.