First Day Back

I never teach on the first day of school. It's pointless; chaos reigns supreme, and my being there would only add to said chaos. I did go around and post my schedule at a lot of places, in an effort to nudge myself ever-so-gently back into the process, and by the end of the week, I'll have a normal-length day (and hopefully, a close-to-normal-length bank receipt to go with it).

There's always something about the first day of school. So much promise in the new year. It's a tabula rasa, and there's always the chance that, no matter what happened in the past, a student, or a student group, or even an entire club can remake itself in a new image. Everyone's football team is undefeated; everyone's band has a shot at a sweepstakes; not a single student has gone to detention yet (though the cynic in me wonders how long that record stands unbroken at various schools); even the Least Important Stuff That Gets Talked About the Most (i.e. standardized test scores) starts out the year unblemished. Even as I get caught up in the "return to the grind" elements of things (all the driving between schools, wearing long pants in 104-degree weather, thirteen-hour teaching days), I can stop for a moment to reflect in the freshness of it all.

Creative jurisprudence of the week: Speaking of the kids who get detentions on the first day of school, I bet more than a few of them also tend to get a lot of traffic tickets. If so, they'd better hope their cases aren't heard by Julia Jent, a judge in Indiana, who sentences teenage repeat violators to ride the bus--sometimes for up to an entire semester.

This lady should be riding the bus too: A driver in Phoenix has received 70 speeding tickets in the last five months.