“Hello class, this is my first day as a teacher and I just want to go to know you all today,” I said in a high pitched voice than normal.

I was just here in this exact class only four years ago, why does it feel so different?

“Alright, I’m going to start and then we can go from front to back in introductions,” I announced before continuing, “ I’m Salish Bloom and I’d love for you to call me Salish, I just graduated from collage last year and believe it or not, I was sitting in one of those desks only four years ago,” I said with a smile.

A chorus of ‘cool’s’ and ‘wow’s’ echoed around me. This is good, interaction, I was really worried about them not wanting to connect with me.

As we went through introductions I felt good about the way I was handling my first day, it was going a lot better than I thought, until the next class.

“Hello class! I’m a new teacher here and I just graduated from college, I’d love to get to know you guys today!”

Silence. Well this is awkward I thought as a fidgeted with my fingers.

“Alright, not a talking group, that’s okay, we can just sit—-in silence—-without talking,” I said uncomfortably.

Thought out the whole class my students sat there in silence as I talked. Why was this class so different than the other on? I didn’t let this discourage me though, I will figure this out.

As I drove home from a very long first day I thought back to my first day sitting in the desk in that room and how I felt so alone. As if I couldn’t talk to anyone because the space between each desk was so big, a plan entered my head immediately. The next day when my second class came in went to the principal’s office and asked if I could use tables instead of desk. He instantly agreed once I gave my argument and had someone help me move them in.

“Hey, thank you so much for helping me with these!” I said to the teacher about my age.

“No problem at all!” He said with a smile.

Once we finished we stood in silence until He broke it, “would you want to meet up for coffee sometime? Sorry, that’s kind of random, I was just thinking, you look new here and I’m new here so it could be fun to get to know each other,” he rambled.

My laugh echoed in the empty room, soon followed by his.

“I’d love to! What’s your name?” I questioned.

“Awesome, I’m Beck, how about you?” He replied.

“Hi Beck, my name’s Salish, nice to meet you,” I answered with a big dummy smile on my face.

“Can I get your number—-to plan for coffee of course,” he asked.

My smile somehow grew bigger as he gave me his phone to put my number into.

“See you soon, hopefully!” I said as Beck left the room.

Everything was going to well for me so far! Hopefully this class will too. I not only improved the seating but instead of talking to the whole class, I talked to individual people instead and seemed to be working great. The future in this school is looking so good, I thought to myself as I cleaned up my desk after class.

———————————————————-——

Hey, this is really just testing this out for the first time, I didn’t know how the app worked so I was kinda just messing around with the prompt and it really sucks haha