First Day Jitters (Teachers Edition)

Do your realize teachers have first day of school jitters too. Here are the top three reasons your child's teacher may have the first day jitters. The first one surprisingly, is our families may not like us or more importantly the new kindergartner may not like us. This is only important to the teacher if they value student and teacher relationships. Will it stop us from doing our job, NO! but it sure does make it easier.

The second reason is parents keeping secrets. What kind of secrets you make ask? Anything that will have an impact on your child's performance in the classroom. Well not really secrets (they just act like it) such as allergies, personal situations that affect the child, behavior problems and known learning disabilities. For example I have had students that have regular nose bleeds but did not find out from the parent until several episodes and a phone call home, that this was normal for the child. So why did I need to know that? Because I ended up wasting valuable and limited learning time writing incident slips and calming everyone else down except the student whose nose was bleeding. Parent or guardians do not realize how sharing this information upfront allows for the teacher to prepare in advance for situations that may arise. It provides parents an opportunity to share how they deal with the situations at home so that the teacher can try to stick to that routine as much as possible.

Finally , the third reason we have the jitters is because we don't feel prepared. Truth is we will never feel prepared for the first day of school. There will always be a glitch in the technology, we will always be missing important information from a parent and admin will always give us last minute things to do right before the bell rings. Therefore parents if we have not shared with you pertinent information such as the lunch for the week, its because we don't have it YET. We will get back with you is our most popular answer. I'm pretty sure their are more than three but for now three will do. The point is we get nervous and overwhelmed too. Some teachers are better at hiding it more than others. In the end we all want it to be a joyous occasion for everyone and an experience for the student that will encourage a gateway to learning. As a kindergarten parent please take that into consideration on the first day of school. #kindergardensmarts