My student teacher from last year is teaching at my school this year, and she's in my classroom after I am. As her students trickled in, I felt like going up to them and saying, "If you mess with her, you'll have to deal with me!" and then glaring at them. I resisted the urge. As I was reminded several times last week when I felt the need to watch out for her, I must let my baby bird fly on her own. But I still might have been sizing her students up...
Anyway--my students seem like a fun mix of personalities, and I'm really excited to get their first writing assignments to see what they think is the first thing I should know about them.
As for wardrobe choices for the first day, I'm sure I'm not the only one who brings his/her game face for the first day. I found out today that one of my co-workers refers to my work clothes as my "schoolmarm uniform." #reasonswhyImsingle I think this might have offended me at some point in life, but I'm fine with it now. As a teacher, my job is to teach, and if I'm dressed like a schoolmarm, I assume my students will assume I know what I'm doing. I think, as a teacher, fashion is really tricky. You can't say that what you wear doesn't matter because plenty of students will assess your relevance to their lives based on your appearance (fair or not), but many fashion trends aren't really school appropriate or don't allow for the type of movement needed in a classroom. So it's a bit of a balancing act.
As for first day outfits, I have a basic format I follow. Here's what I have:
1. Almost always a dress. It looks put together and doesn't require making sure a shirt stays tucked. It generally reduces the amount of fidgeting I do during the day.
2. If at all possible, a sleeveless dress. In all places I've taught, it is really likely to be REALLY hot when school starts, and the AC is unreliable, so I always want to be in the best position to not melt. Also, if you're sweating, even if it's a sauna in your room, students might interpret this as nerves, so I like to limit the possibility of looking freaked out on the first day.
3. There is always a cardigan involved for when the AC finally kicks on and it becomes an icebox.
This year I went super basic--I bought this shift dress in the spring when Banana was having a great sale, but I didn't wear it to school until today. I liked this particular dress as a first day dress for a few reasons:
1. The dark color would forgive me if I dropped my lunch on it.
2. The shape made it really comfortable and made it easy for me to maneuver through the room.
3. The length meant I didn't have to worry about tugging on it throughout the day.
I then paired the rather boring dress with my favorite necklace. I think I'm sometimes drawn to basic dresses like this one because it gives me a chance to play with shoes, cardigans and jewelry. I'm not enough of a risk taker to make those choices with patterned dresses.
Like I said, this dress is so last season, but here are a few similar options:
The necklace I wore is CRAZY old. It's funny because when I bought it I was sure it wouldn't make it more than a few years, but I'm still wearing it. I'm not sure if that means I'm out of style or I made a good investment, but either way, here are some newer options:
The shoes are my Dak Prescott shoes from last season--my back-ups that became my starters. They made it through the day without killing my feet.
Okay--on that note, I'm going to wrap this up and get to sleep in hopes that if I sleep enough, this bullfrog voice I'm rocking will go away...although having a deep voice on the first day of school isn't the worst thing I guess.
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