First Days

September 1st, unless it lands on a weekend, is always the first day of school in Lithuania and, as such, it’s also a national holiday. The students all wear starched and pressed uniforms and carry handfuls of flowers to their teachers. Lithuanian folk dancers in traditional clothing spin out their patterned skirts in the public squares. The mayor gives a well-attended oration, and everybody cheers. It feels the way the first day of school was always supposed to feel had there been no bullies or puberty, just a promising year full of good books and good work and, at least for that day, the infinite possibility of knowledge taking you wherever you wanted to go.

All that possibility felt nearly palpable this morning as I crossed the bridge over the green-gold river and passed the men with their bristle brooms and reflective jackets spot-cleaning the sidewalks, the women with their kerchiefs and puckered faces setting out the wooden crates of pears and plums and, today, flowers at the roadside stands and, of course, the children, even a teenage boy with dirty sneakers and greasy hair but also with a crisp green blazer and arms full of roses.

It was in that wash of excitement and apprehension that I arrived at the school well before 8 o’clock and promptly set up shop in the lecture hall, about 30 minutes early.

At this point, it would probably be helpful to explain what exactly I’m doing here. I am one of the two instructors in the Intensive English Program, which is only one year old. We have a total of 30 students whose English is not yet high enough for university study. Our job is, in nine months, to get each student’s English to that point. My workload is pretty heavy for a professor: I have 16 teaching hours per week, and one of them is a writing class (6 assignments with 2-3 drafts of each!), not exactly a light prep. Although I will surely get tired and discouraged, right now I am head-over-heels in love with the challenge and all of the surprises in store. As evidenced by my showing up half an hour before class was supposed to start.

So, back in the lecture hall, I occupied myself by turning on and off the speakers (just to make sure they were working), turning on and off the projector, moving the whiteboard to the middle of the stage and then back and then somewhere in the middle, rereading my lesson plans, and reapplying my chapstick.

Despite fueling all of my neuroses, when the students finally started showing up, I behaved like a normal human being: I smiled, said “Welcome!”, and played selections from Bach’s Cello Suites over the speakers, partly to make sure the speakers were still working and partly to infuse the sense of calm, purpose, and poise I wanted so desperately to feel.

Though I worry myself into a blind panic whenever I have to stand in front of a classroom for the first time, I think that teaching will always be a part of my life no matter what I end up ultimately doing. As my students file into their rows with their new notebooks and planners and pens, their bashful glances, some of the boys in ties-one in a full suit!-I am overcome by this strange mixture of maternal adoration and concern for their well-being. I have always had this feeling when it comes to new students, and I have yet to decide whether or not it’s healthy. All I know is that I want to try my damnedest to 1) give them the best opportunities possible and 2) not look like an obsequious fool.

In this spirit of joy and quiet concern, my classes slid smoothly by. I found the teaching zone and stayed there. By the end of the day, I learned everyone’s names and, I hope, imparted a sense of purpose, hope, and goodwill. In other words, LCC was not my old high school, I did not get lost, my lesson plans were not covered in cartoon characters, my students were not students whom I’d failed before, and I lost no crucial pieces of clothing. And so, I believe I can, compared to my dreams at least, declare my first day teaching at LCC a success.