tales of a first year nothing.

One thing that has always fascinated me as an educator is the bathroom.

All a kid needs for the keys to adventure? Ask a question. A bathroom pass. Freedom. Only them and the promises of the wild frontier that is subway tile and laminate stalls.

My very first year teaching, I taught first grade. I had seventeen high need, highly medicated, highly loving Burger King as a food group kids.

Nothing short of any drugstore miracle could’ve saved me or prepared me for the onslaught of what was to come and what was to be.

I only allowed one kid at a time to visit the bathroom from class because they were just that eager to be the next Columbus and plant their own legacy.

Well, one day, I was busy tying a shoe, packing up the kids, and fussing at a kid for surfing with his desk. I accidentally allowed two boys to venture to the great unknown and therefore, Pandora’s Box was free for the taking.

Except I didn’t even realize it with all of the activity until an assistant from a kindergarten class (the calmest person I had ever seen no less) burst through my door with two of my boys by the ears. Her face was engulfed in the flames shooting from her ears and her eyes and her own anger.

“THESE TWO were CLIMBING THE WALLS LIKE CATS!!”

The boys just stared at me, wide eyed, probably still in shock they were caught and kicked off their expedition before planting their flag.

I have no idea what I said, what I did, or how I reacted. Perhaps I blocked it out.

There was another time where I began doing guided reading groups in my room. We had been practicing rotating, manners, not galloping, and actually working at our stations. I had built a nice fort of self confidence with the kids and the stations.

And it all went well. Until out of the corner of my eye, I watched one of my boss girls putting her group members in assigned seats on the carpet and lecturing to them like she was their queen.

That part didn’t phase me.

The part where the other four kids sat there and allowed their lives to be remotely operated by this girl is what floored me.

She’d see me watching, deflect, and do her work-but the minute she felt my attention was occupied, she went right back to her tyrant ways.

In another group, they argued. One little girl ran up to me bawling.

“He…he….HE STOLE MY PENCIL!!!!”

“What does your pencil look like?”

“It’s yellow.”

{Like every other pencil in the universe}

I picked up a couple of pencils from a nearby cup and showed them to her.

“Like these?”

A nod.

“So…how do you know that he has your pencil if they’re all yellow?”

“Because he has a yellow pencil and I had a yellow pencil first.”

Okay. At this point, I got up, told the kids to go back to their seats. Ordered, really.

And as they were trotting back to their seats, one of my most medicated, most needy boys scrambled across the room and grabbed my arm. His eyes were wide and he looked like he was going to convulse.

“MS SHAPPPIIRRRROOOO!!!!”

“Stop shrieking. What’s wrong?”

“HE STOLE MY PENCIL!!!”

Yeah. You can’t make this stuff up. I keep these stories filed away in a vault that is all but forgotten about because that year was quite the ninth circle of hell. All the way around. But there is no debating the hilarity from a distance.

Those kids taught me everything about myself that I already knew and had no grip on. Too many people spoke for me. Too many people let their opinions become my opinion. Every person has their breaking point, whether it be a guided reading lesson fail or a harder fall like the ninth circle of hell.

I do know that after I left, I was told that Boss Girl stood outside of my empty room, bawling her eyes out. She asked a former coworker why my name wasn’t above the door and my friend told her I’d moved. My friend told me she wailed.

I find it endearing and hilarious, because perhaps the year wasn’t quite the failure I’d concocted it to be and she knew I wouldn’t be around to warn her second grade teacher what a boss she was.