First Day of School (Year 3)

I started my third year of teaching 5th and 6th grade math at an inner city school in Cincinnati. It was my best first day so far. Maybe that's because I was 15 minutes late due to my unfortunately swiping my wife's keys as well as my own. All those last minute touches to my room went out the window when I had to drive back home 30 minutes before turning around and heading back to school. If you are keeping score at home, my commute was 90 minutes instead of 30. It certainly meant things had to improve from there. At this point in the year, I am teaching 3 classes of math. One group of students is 5th graders, one group is 6th graders and one group is a mix of 5th and 6th graders. We are hoping to have enough students to merit a 4th teacher and subsequently wave goodbye to that split classroom. It is going to be a real challenge once I start getting into content in the next week or two. Today was icebreakers, rules creation and some clerical stuff. Oh, a boy cried a few tears in my class. Normally, that would be a bad thing. I was just asking him how he was doing. He was reserved and looked pretty warn out. He wouldn't really say anything aside from nodding. He did indicate he was tired. When he cried, I felt like crying. Pretty much every time I see one of these kids hurting that bad, I feel a pit in my stomach. After reflecting on it a bit, I am taking the whole incident as a sign that he was opening up to me in a way and that I will be able to make a real connection with him. I could spend 20 minutes and a few thousand words rambling on about teaching strategies, objectives and other stuff. I'd rather close my eyes, fall asleep and gear up for Day 2.