The First Day of School…

…is just the first day of school. By my math, I get about 179 more days coming after it.

Is it special? Of course.

Should you over-stress about it? For sure not.

99% of the power of your first day of school comes down to how well you execute on it for the remainder of the school year.

• Should you establish some rules of the road? Absolutely.
• Get students doing the kind of work you'll expect of them all year? Yessir. (For me, that's writing.)
• Give 'em a taste of who you are and what brought you to this classroom today? Yes, please. (Just keep the autobiography brief because our classes aren't about us!)

So plan some of those kinds of things, and then, if you're going to put stress on yourself to do something, just focus on getting good at teaching. Not too much stress, but yeah — some. Because that's what we're trying to do this year. Get better, get good.

The first day's just an experiment toward that.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Digging Deeper Into the First Day(s) of School

What follows is a list of articles I've written on the first days of school.

• Everything You Need (and Nothing You Don’t) to Start the School Year Well
• Freaked Out About the First Day of School? Three Quick Things That Help
• The Power of the Humdrum: Why Your First Day of School Isn’t Going to Make or Break Your School Year
• Cures for First Day of School Overwhelm
• Simple Questions on the First Day of School That Teach Purpose
• A First Day of School Activity That Teaches Argument, Which Teaches Thinking (Updated)
• A Simple, Powerful Tweak on the First Day of School Index Card Activity
• First Days of School Writing Prompts
• 42 Prompts to Get Students Speaking or Writing at the Start of the School Year
• The Four Pillars: Defining Success at the Start of the Year (and Often Thereafter)