My First Day of Grade One

Homeschool freak turned primary school teacher, and how it changed my life

Me and “quiet coyote” on the first day of school. This classroom management tactic was an absolute failure as kids do NOT get quiet when they see a puppet.

Yesterday morning I was trying to choose the perfect outfit to wear from a morning bicycle ride to a fancy sushi lunch date. The modern woman really can spare no expense when it comes to flexible wardrobe pieces. To accommodate my needs of comfort and elegance, I reached for a pair of wide-legged trousers that have been banished to the back of my closet since last year.

Upon buttoning them up, I reached into my pockets and was confronted with two relics of a time that suddenly feels very distant: in one pocket, a Pokemon card, in the other, a stubby piece of chalk.

These had been among my “teacher pants,” living for three years in the monochromatic stack of professional clothes I would pull from every exhausted morning in lieu of using my brain. I suppose the last I’d worn them was in my final days of teaching last May. (Here is where I kindly ask you to overlook the implication that I don’t wash my clothes as regularly as I should.)

Over the last few months, I’ve thought quite a few times about writing on my teaching experience. I think the thing stopping me from speaking (or writing) about it formally is that I’m worried it’ll be a punch in the gut. That in letting myself think about teaching, I’ll admit how much I miss it, or that I’ll face that haunting six-letter word: regret~~. I quit teaching to pursue writing full tiem, and there was no room for regret in my budding freelance life, which has been held together through pure self-delusion and blind conviction.

But on finding my sweet little artifacts of the first grade yesterday, I felt more joy than pain, and above all, immense gratitude. And what do I do when I feel things big time? I tell you all about it, of course.

Little monsters

When I began teaching English in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2021, I intentionally sought out a position in high schools. Young kids are famously loud, sticky, and annoying, and as someone who doesn’t even want one of my own, I had no interest in corralling someone else’s. So, off to the 10th grade I went, bright-eyed in my fantasies of peaceful learning.