By Garrett Hedman

Oh the anticipation I had for my first day! Well, here’s how it panned out.

I rode the bus. Yes, I am one of 12 teachers out of 200 that takes the 20-minute bus ride to our school every morning. My father, a bus driver himself, would be proud. The benefits of daily bus riding: brilliant, Mississippi sunrises, breakfast, and more than an hour of free time to prepare for the day. Not to mention, I’m saving the environment. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that 8 of the 12 teachers that chose ride the bus teach high school science (primarily biology and chemistry).

Anyway, I entered the high school/elementary school (the buildings are adjacent to each other) with great anticipation to set up my classroom. Walking down the hall I was greeted by a friendly cockroach that I introduced to the bottom of my boat shoes (my first roach extermination ever). I entered my classroom, and began to put up posters around the walls. We have the “Our Big Goal” poster, the “HollaDolla Reward System” poster (yes, I decided to use the currency that I wrote about in the previous post), the “Classroom Rules” poster, the “Objective Mastery” poster (it tracks how well people are doing on understanding the objectives we teach each day), and a periodic table. The room was shaping up to be a conducive environment to learn.

In the science workroom, my teaching partner and I rehearsed what we were going to say one more time. I then started to dance a little to get pumped up for the day when a woman stepped into the room asking for all science teachers to gather for a meeting.

The woman calmly explained to us that no students had showed up for Chemistry and only half of the expected students showed up for high school English and Biology, a.k.a. I’m not teaching my first day! I couldn’t help but laugh and think of the readers of this blog, all the anticipation, the insight, then BOOM! I’m not teaching.

The woman goes on to explain to us how the school had offered a two-week extension of school that students could take to make up classes they originally failed. However, there were still quite a few students who opted not to attend the two-week extension, so there was a chance to “recruit” some students to teach. So we started to make phone calls. Yes, I was the telemarketer selling education. “Your child has the chance to enrich his mind. Also, he can make up credit.” How awkward, yet how powerful. It was the first thing I actually wanted to sell, but was afraid to. However, the deeper I got into the phone list, the more I thought to myself how much four weeks could impact these students.

This is what Teach for America is about. Although administration may throw us a curve ball, we call families to get students into the classroom to enrich their minds, to close the achievement gap.

Nonetheless, our work paid off. The next day, my second first day, I had eight students.