08.22.22
I never really did well on first days.
Today was the first day of being back to face-to-face classes since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Yesterday, I conditioned myself that I am beyond prepared for my first F2F class as a public school teacher.
I have never been more wrong.
Perhaps in this profession, there really is nothing that's certain. Even though I have quite prepared myself for this day, major bumps still rattled me.
Husband and I were too excited to go to school that we left home at 4AM. By 5AM, I was already at school. It was quite chilling to be the only one in the building while it's still dark. I was reminded of the ghost stories my colleagues told me, and I was literally trembling while opening the door to our Math Center. But my trembling quickly went away as I opened my bag to bring out my things, finding out that I left my phones at home! What a way to start the day! I am now devoid of any means of real-time communications with my heads, my colleagues, and my husband. Then I found out that I also left my masterlist of students at home, so I had to print another copy. But then I didn't have my phone and the center didn't have LAN or WiFi networks, and my files were saved in my cloud storage. I had to go down my classroom to connect to the LAN there, then go back up the center to print my masterlist.
Then came my first period class. It was my advisory class. Things were actually going quite well until 7AM. My teacher's schedule indicates that by 7AM, there should already be another teacher taking over. 7:15 came and went, then 7:30, then 7:45, then 8:00. Since I have planned for activities that will last only for an hour, I was already quickly running out of ideas of what I will have my students do. Then I saw one of my co-teachers in the grade level, that's when she told me that we were actually supposed to stay in our advisory class until 9:00. Apparently it was announced through our faculty group chat, which I was not able to read since I f-cking left my phones at home. So of course, as a teacher, I needed to think quickly. Good thing I was able to come up with first day activities that could kill time without looking like I was only killing time.
Then, I went to my 2nd class for the day at 9AM. On the class program, my schedule for this class was only until 9:50AM. But we were having fun with the class introduction activities, perhaps too much fun, that we actually ran out of time. It was quite embarrassing that the next teacher had to literally call me out to tell me that she's supposed to go next.
Third class came and at least this one was quite an enjoyable class. However, there was just one tiny little hiccup: I forgot my "lines." While I was discussing my classroom rules, I had to pause for about 15 seconds to remember what I wanted to say. I then resorted to the classic TV commercial "Bawal ang pork..." but my students, being Gen Z, were not able to relate.
Then I had my long break for an hour. By the last period, I was already exhausted and dazed and confused. I entered the wrong f-ckng classroom. It was so awkward when the class's real teacher at that time knocked and asked, "Ma'am, may conflict po yata tayo sa schedule?" And when I checked mine, I realized I was supposed to be on the other side of the building. I apologized profusely to the teacher. It was a good thing that she was so understanding.
So there, no matter how much I prepared myself, I wasn't.
I guess I'll just have to make it up for the rest of the school year.
*1st draft written on the 1st day of class. Got too tired to finish it within the week.
