First Day

The rush was on until the first bell rang. I felt like I was going to be playing in a football game. The energy was flowing and I was pumped. I was jumping up and down at times and just felt like pushing somebody around, with the expectation of someone pushing back. I was excited.
Be that as it may, there was still a job to do. Having PE and Music near the beginning of the day, it was my job to get kids semi-settled and out the door to Music. But when the doors open upon the first bell ringing, it is literal pandamonium and difficult to settle everybody. Parents, new kids and loads or papers hinder a teacher from really getting in to the process of getting everybody geared up for transition. I had a kid not on my class list who another teacher said, "He is in your room." I sent him to find his seat without knowing he was not on my list, and did not have a name tag. As he circled the room I thought about the predicament in between the many questions from children and adults. Once the kids were off to Music, I went to the office to find out what was going on. After some sorting out, we learned he was supposed to be in Mrs. Tender's class. This was fine because I could tell the kid was going to be a handful. But I fell sad because I could also tell he needed a teacher like me and, that teacher is quite nearly the opposite of me in style.
So the day went on. That's it. It went on, seemingly without stop. We cooked through reading and predicting. Then came lunch, then Math. And while we were entrenched in the end of the day and getting to know one another, we ran over in to our read aloud time and settled for missing it.
My feeling on the day is that it went well for the most part. I am not at all used to such a scholastic first day of school but more of the technical stuff with a little academics. Routine and knowing names is how I started last year. We are getting to that but I do feel as though things are falling in to place as we are going. I wonder perhaps if I am on a continuance of last year when I had the best kids in the world. This is not at all a similar group besides the fact that I do have great kids who are very likeable. But there are some very interesting personalities that do not all mesh.
My team teacher and I are working on starting The Daily Five next week and I need to make sure I have a pretty good grip on these kids before I can get started on that. Admittedly, I am a little nervous about this but know that I can get these kids under wraps. No problem.