At 9:15 a.m. Aug. 25, Thunder Hill Elementary School teacher Jane Choi was as ready as she could be.

She had been a student teacher at the same Columbia school in 2007 and a long-term substitute there in the spring of 2008. But this was the beginning of her very first full-time teaching gig.

To prepare for the students, she had decorated cheery bulletin boards, fluffed the pillows in her cozy reading nook, arranged tidy rows of desks and affixed a neat label to just about every item in the room, from the bins of crayons and glue sticks to the box of "magical writing ideas."

As the bell signaled the start of the school day, Choi, 23, stood at the entrance of her first-grade classroom, smoothed her skirt and took a deep breath.

"OK, here they come," she said, a mix of excitement and nervousness in her voice.

First in the door was Chloe. Choi asked her for her "ticket," a personal greeting which was to take the form of a handshake, a high-five or a hug.

Soon after came Samuel, who handed Choi an apple before heading past her to search for his desk.

The idea was to greet each child in this manner. But in a flurry of new sneakers and over-stuffed backpacks, the bottleneck of students eager to see their new classroom hurried by, most without a handshake, a high-five or a hug.

A band of 17 spirited 6-year-olds can derail even the most carefully laid plans.

One of 340 new teachers

Choi was among the 340 new teachers hired by the Howard County Public School System for the 2008-2009 school year.

Similar scenes unfolded around the county's 72 schools as new teachers put into practice the years of college course work and the weeks of orientations, policy review and curriculum workshops -- and perhaps fulfilled childhood aspirations.

Before the first day, Choi, a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, admitted to having a healthy dose of nerves and even to a few tears.

After all, it was her first professional teaching job and the first time she was charged with overseeing the education of a classroom of children for a full school year.

She'd had nightmares of missing parent-teacher conferences and having a class full of little terrors.

She'd felt overwhelmed at points, mastering the procedural handbooks, planning ways to effectively and creatively deliver the curriculum and attending to the details of everyday classroom management.

"I never thought about having to think up my own class rules, or organize my library by genre," she said. "There are a lot of details I never thought about."

Along with the physical preparations were the mental ones, Choi said.

"I've been praying a lot. I've been going to church and praying," she said.

In talking about her apprehensions, Choi said she's not overly concerned about the day-to-day challenges of teaching but with the big picture.

"I want to be the teacher they're hoping for," she said, adding that she hopes her students learn a combination of academics and life lessons from her. "When the kids leave class each day, I hope that they've learned something."

'First Day Jitters'

Once her students had settled in on Monday, Choi read her class the story "First Day Jitters," by Julie Danneberg.

The story describes a girl's apprehensions on the first day of school. To the delight of Choi's students, the girl turns out to be a teacher.

"I can relate to this book," Choi told her students. "I was really, really nervous for the first day of school, which is today. I was nervous, but it's not that bad."

By 10:15 a.m., the room was quiet and calm as students wrote and illustrated their own back-to-school stories.

Interspersed throughout periods of calm during the remainder of the day were a fire drill, a bee sting, a missed bus and an incident in which, for a brief period, a child refused to come out from under his desk.

But, overall, Choi said she was satisfied with the day.

"I'm glad it's over," Choi said after returning to her empty classroom at about 4:15 p.m. "I honestly didn't know what to expect. I was expecting chaos and some parts of the day were chaos. But they all seem really eager to learn."

Although earlier in the day she'd planned to treat herself to some retail therapy after school, Choi had changed her mind by the time school ended. Instead of hitting the mall, she said, she was going home to rest.

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user comments (1)

user timr905 says...

Ms. Choi did wonderfully the first day with both the parents and the children. She's going to be a great asset at Thunder Hill.

Posted 8:47 AM, 08.28.08

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