ENGLISH SUMMER VACATION HOMEWORK

CREATIVE WRITING
Task 1= The New Teacher
As I sweated through my suit in my 95-degree Farenheit classroom, it occurred to me that I had never
been truly nervous for the beginning of school until I became a teacher. As a student, I was always
excited. Who will my teacher be? What will we learn? Similar questions stirred in my mind, but now I
was responsible for the answers to both. Who will I be as a teacher? What will they learn? Still, things
were off to a good start.

In the middle of my first few minutes as a teacher as I was spewing off the standard fare about
punctuality and attendance, I found my authority challenged. The door swung open and a young boy
with a face as round as a basketball bounced his way into the room. He was Alan. He was late. And he
did not close the door.

Somehow, in my five weeks of teacher training over the summer, we had failed to cover the appropriate
response to this entrance. Over those weeks, I co-taught high school English to an average of four
students, but I never had an Alan. As a new teacher, I lacked the experience to have good judgment, but
I made up for it with perseverance. Teaching was not a job, it was an act of social justice, and so I carried
on.

“Please t—take your seat,” I managed.

Thus began day one of year one. By 2:30, when the kids had left, I was passed out again. By the end of
the week, I was a rag doll masquerading as a fifth grade teacher.

Fast forward two years, many 90-plus-hour work weeks, and a summer spent creating an integrated
curriculum from scratch with the help of two amazing fellow teachers.

As on my first day, I am soaking wet—again. But this time, it is not sweat. I have just finished a year-end
ritual known as “the balloons” with my students. A dozen staff and parents watched as I read Dr. Seuss’
Oh the Places You’ll Go to 26 beautiful, brilliant fifth graders, all nervously holding a colored water
balloon in their hands. Shortly after, I asked the students to raise their balloons above their heads, and I
popped each one as they shouted our class theme: “Repair the World!” In the end, there was only one
balloon and one dry head remaining—mine.

Still smiling, still dripping, I sat down at my desk after dismissing the kids for the last time. A slightly
taller, slightly less-round Alan, now finishing sixth grade, bounced into the room. After laughing about
“the balloons,” which he had experienced as my fifth grade student, we chatted about his future for
nearly an hour. Despite uncertain beginnings and uncertain futures, something happened here. My
students succeeded. Therefore, I succeeded.