Today is my 26th first day of school. In a couple of hours, I will meet my next batch of 21 students. This will bring my grand total of students taught this year to exactly 600.
A good, round number.
When I started teaching back in 1999, my life was very different, and the world was different, too.
People still walked the planet without smartphones in their pockets.
Email would arrive at my school in 1999.
The Internet would arrive the following year.
The World Trade Center still stood in New York City.
Tom Brady was still two years away from changing the New England Patriots’ legacy.
MTV still played music videos for much of the day.
Amazon was still only selling books.
Smoking sections were still common in restaurants, bars, and some workplaces.
The average gasoline price was $1.22 per gallon.
The average movie ticket was less than $5.00.
The average new car cost about $21,000.
Average monthly rent was $645.
The national minimum wage was $5.15 an hour.
The world can change quickly in a quarter-century.
On a personal level:
I had yet to meet my wife. She would arrive at the school two years later.
I was still running my DJ company and performing at about 40 weddings per year.
I was still a decade away from publishing my first novel.
I was twelve years away from taking the stage for the first time in New York, telling a story, and changing my life.
Elysha and I were still 14 years away from launching Speak Up.
I was three years from swinging my first golf club.
I met Plato Karafelis, my first school principal, in 1999, and he would be my principal for the next 14 years.
Under his leadership, I would begin producing Shakespearean productions with second, third, and fifth-grade students. I’d be named West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year in 2005 and one of three finalists for Connecticut Teacher of the Year. I would join him as we traveled the country, introducing his Higher Order Thinking model to schools and school districts nationwide.
In addition to being my principal, Plato would also become the director of plays I performed at The Playhouse on Park.
Later, he would serve as the officiant of Elysha’s and my wedding.
Most importantly, he has become a lifelong friend.
Two other teachers began their careers on that same day back in 1999, and 26 years later, both are still teaching with me and are dear colleagues and friends.
Other teachers who would soon arrive at my school and quickly become some of my closest and dearest friends. Five of the ten people in our bridal party were teachers at our school, and all remain our friends to this day.
The musicians at our wedding ceremony were our school’s instrumental and vocal music teachers.
The vocal music teacher has since retired, and I play golf with him at least once a week. I introduced him to the sport.
I wrote a rock opera and three musicals with the instrumental music teacher, and all of them were produced at theaters and summer camps in Connecticut. We are now discussing reviving that rock opera.
Along the way, many wonderful and occasionally less-than-wonderful moments have taken place.
I am friends with many of my former students. Some of my closest friends today are the parents of former students.
I officiated the wedding of one of my students a few years ago.
I have taught the nieces and nephews of former students, and this year, for the first time. I will be teaching the child of one of my former students.
Many teachers have first-day jitters, but I have never experienced that feeling even once.
Had you asked me in 1989, when I was graduating high school and being sent into the world on my own — absent any parental or financial support, with college seeming an impossibility — if my dream of becoming a teacher would one day come true, I would’ve told you it was highly unlikely.
Had you asked me when I was homeless or jailed or awaiting trial for a crime I did not commit if I would one day make my dream of becoming a teacher a reality, I would have told you no.
That ship has sailed.
That makes every first day of school another dream come true for me.
An impossibility attained.
An insurmountable mountain was somehow climbed.
A tiny miracle.
I don’t feel jitters. I feel excitement, gratitude, pride, and a hint of disbelief that my life has become everything it is and will continue to be.
It’s a feeling I hope for every one of my students who I will soon meet for the first time:
The unspeakable, indescribable, overwhelming feeling of joy at looking back on a career that once seemed impossible and knowing that it somehow happened, and that along the way, you met some of the people you love most in your life and would find friendship, community, camaraderie, and love you never thought possible.
Best of luck to my teacher friends on their first day.
Remember, they are just kids who need consistency and love.
Also, on those hard days, remember what I say to my colleagues when they are struggling:
“No matter how impossible this day feels, every day ends at 3:30, and there are only 180 of them each year. You can do this.”
