You'll Learn More That First Year....
"Well, Mr. Act, I've been looking over your resume and application, and given that Princess Twilight vouches for your abilities, we've decided to go ahead and offer you the position. Do you live near Baltimare already, or will you be moving?"
I had been waiting for months to hear those words. Well, by that point, I'd have settled for anything other than "We've decided to go with another applicant." I mean, seriously, it's like going to Princess Twilight's school for education meant nothing. The only thing that mattered to most schools seemed to be "Do you have any prior experience?" and "Can you coach hoofball?" Since I've had my degree for all of a month and a half, I clearly don't have any experience, and given that my only experience with sports was in video games (and I always lost anyway), I'm fairly useless in that regard, as well. So, being unemployed and sitting on 57,000 bits of debt (you'd be surprised how expensive higher education can be in what is supposed to be the world's most enlightened and progressive kingdom), I jumped at the first job offer I got.
I felt on top of the world. Hay yeah, I'm a big colt now. Got an adult job with a real paycheck and everything. More importantly, I was finally fulfilling my foalhood dream. I'd always wanted to teach, ever since I was ten years old. Princess Twilight opened her School for Aspiring Educators right when I entered high school in Stalliongrad, so I already had the perfect college lined up. Always had my heart set on teaching Equestrian History, but I knew that most beginning teachers ended up being assigned World History, so I made sure to brush up on that when I was in Ponyville. Good thing, too. When I walked through the doors of South Baltimare High School on my first day as a salaried employee, guess what I was told I'd be teaching? World History. All day long. But that was fine. I was prepared, right? I went to the best school in the kingdom for teaching, and I was damn smart, too, if I may boast just a little. I was confident that I could handle teaching World History.
That confidence began to wane just a bit as the first day of school approached. By approached, I mean rocketed at near FTL speeds since I was hired literally the day before classes started. Can anypony say Cutie Mark Crusaders Winging It? I'd had to wing it before, though. When I did my student teaching in Ponyville teaching Equestrian History, I had to make up an entire lesson on the Lunar Rebellion on the spot, and that went great. Granted, it helped that Cloud Kicker lived in Ponyville and, being a Kicker, was quite familiar with the rebellion, making the perfect guest speaker, but the point is that I could wing it if I had to. I got to the school early on that first morning, threw together a makeshift lesson plan for the day - it was easier than I'd feared given that I taught the same thing all day - and prepared to meet the smiling faces of my students.
That's where the similarities between my expectations and reality went from "kinda sorta" to "what the buck is this?" As my students began to trickle into the classroom, I started to notice something. It wasn't just that my students' faces didn't sport smiles. It wasn't just that, in the place of smiles, there were frowns. They looked less happy to be there than a Canterlot unicorn at an Earth pony mud wrestling tournament. I mean, I know it's the first day of school after the summer, but come on, guys. Show a little enthusiasm. Life is what you make it, right? Well, apparently life was devoid of any happiness between the hours of 8 am and 3 pm, and damn it if even a single ray of sunshine tries to penetrate the oppressive misery.
In hindsight, I probably looked similar on the first day of my freshman year of high school, but that's the first thing I learned the "hard way" about teaching - your expectations will never match the reality. My professors always said that I'd learn more my first year teaching than I did in all four years of college, and I very quickly realized just how true that was. Unfortunately, I was too busy being stunned by the failure of my reality to mirror my expectations to think that rationally; that first day was a whirlwind of unexpected challenges and awkward attempts at discussion (it's like proper speech fell along the wayside since I graduated high school and was replaced with incoherent mumbling).
My professors always told me, "Be mean for the first two weeks. It's easy to get nicer as the semester goes on, but it's almost impossible to get meaner." I, in my infinite wisdom, knew for certain that they were just being dramatic; I don't have to be nice for my students to respect my authority. I'm their teacher; my position is naturally one of authority. Oh, what a foolish little stallion I am. You see, that logic works better in small, rural schools like my high school - not so much in large, urban schools like that which you find in Baltimare. The result?
"Alright class, settle down. I'm Mr. Class Act, and I'll be your World History teacher this semester."
-deafening cacophony-
"Quiet, please, class! Let's get started."
-aforementioned cacophony continues-
You can see where this is going. It didn't help that most of my students were either zebras or Earth ponies whereas I'm a particularly not-muscular pegasus. Sure, I might be able to beat them in a race, but my bones have half the density of theirs, and they easily triple my muscle mass; at an age where physical strength is most important, especially among Earth ponies, I was the epitome of everything they don't respect.
I did, thankfully, get my first class settled down eventually, and I'm proud to say that it only took me 40 of our 90 minutes. By proud, I meant thoroughly ashamed, just in case that wasn't clear. Finally having their attention, I went through my introduction, explained how the class would the structured, and passed out what I thought was a fun activity to help them get to know each other, since there were a few middle schools that feed into South Baltimore, and, more importantly, to help me get to know them. I quickly discovered that what gets categorized as "fun and interesting" in my world is considered "lame and pointless" in Surly Teenager Land. That's when I heard the question that would come to boil my blood as well as the bizarre nickname I'd never shake.
"Ay yo, Mr. Kickflip, do we have to do this?"
I just stared at the kid - Ebony Skies, one of the few pegasi in the class - for a minute. "What did you call me?" I wasn't upset or anything (at least not at the nickname); on the contrary, I was quite entertained by its sheer randomness. I just felt certain I had to have misunderstood him. Kickflip? Seriously? I've never even set hoof on a skateboard before. The only reason I even knew what a kickflip was was thanks to those Pro Skater games I played as a foal on my Neightendo 64.
"Well, I wasn't listening when you told us your name, and I didn't just want to say 'Hey you,' so I decided to call you Mr. Kickflip. So do we gotta do this, or what?"
I, again, spent a minute just staring. And blinking. There was an inordinate amount of blinking. "I...uhh....yeah. Yeah, yeah, you have to do this."
"But why?" Ebony asked me. I was beginning to realize that "Because I'm your teacher and I said so" wasn't going to work on these foals as well as it had worked on me when I was their age. And, to be completely fair, it hadn't always worked all that well on me, either.
In one of the few occasions I was actually able to think on the fly that day, I answered, "Because I want to get to know you guys. It will help me learn your names as well as learning something about you." That's what I said; what I was thinking was "For Luna's sake, just shut the buck up and do the damn worksheet."
"Oh," Ebony said. He just kind of stared off into space after that. For a minute, I thought he was going to try to argue with me about the value (or lack thereof) of doing the get-to-know-you sheet, but he just shrugged and said "Okay" and got to work on it.
By the end of that class, I was mentally exhausted. I looked at my watch and felt my heart drop; it was only 9:30. All that, and I still had more than five hours left in the workday. As my second period class trotted into the classroom, I felt ready to collapse. Right from the get-go, however, this class just felt different. The whole atmosphere of the class was different. It was calmer. It was quieter. They came in quietly. They took their seats. They didn't start talking aside from a comment here or there. "This class," I thought to myself, "This class will be my saving grace." It was then that I realized that my classes seem to work in extremes.
"Good morning, everypony. I'm Mr. Class Act. Welcome to World History." Silence. "Alright, let me tell you how the class will be structured. We'll have a quiz after every section and usually two or three sections per unit. If you do your homework, you'll have absolutely no trouble passing the class, even if you don't test well. Does anypony have any questions?" Silence. I covered in three minutes in my second class what took me an hour in my first class. That brings me to the second lesson I learned on my first day as a teacher - every class you teach will be different. Sure, it'll keep things interesting, but when I get through shit way quicker with one class than with another, it takes some creative planning to keep everyone on pace. Honestly, the rest of my second period was uneventful. If you're really that curious, find your nearest brick wall and try having a conversation with it; that's about how the class went.
By the time third period - my planning period - rolled around, I collapsed in my chair, thanking Celestia without pause for my hour and a half of respite. Fun fact, an hour and a half of peace passes far more quickly than an hour and a half of teaching freshmen. I should write to Princess Twilight about that; I may have found a new vein of temporal research. It felt like I had just sat down when the bell for fourth period rang. Although completely exhausted and running on fumes, I did have one thing going for me; after first period, I had looked chaos dead in the eye, and after second period, I'd experienced the dark side of silence. There was nothing fourth period could throw at me that I couldn't handle.
Or so I thought. You see, first period was the chaotic-ignores-the-teacher kind of loud and obnoxious. Fourth period, on the other hoof, was the buck-you-man-you're-not-the-boss-of-me disrespectful kind of loud and obnoxious. You know the classes you see on the overly dramatic movies about the teacher in the inner city schools where you're always surprised nopony takes a switchblade or wingblade to the teacher during the classroom scenes? Yeah, that was this class; that was my fourth period. I hadn't even gotten out "Good afternoon, everypony. My name is Mr. Class Act" before a couple of the colts in the class started criticizing my mane. Then my tie. Then my name. Then my voice. Then my face. Then each other. Even compared to my first class, this was worse than any beast imprisoned in Tartarus.
I knew since that first class that teaching wasn't going to be like I expected. I knew that it would be harder than I was led to believe in college. It wasn't until that fourth class, though, that it really hit me - I wasn't prepared for this. It wasn't just that the reality of teaching is a lot harder than college leads you to believe; I was flat out and truly unprepared for the situation in which I found myself. Perhaps I was a fool for accepting a job at a school with a "rough" reputation, but nothing I learned at Twilight Sparkle's School for Aspiring Educators prepared me in the slightest for the shitstorm that was my first day of fourth period.
Honestly, I don't remember much after the first twenty minutes of fourth period that day. It's funny how the equine brain works; when confronted with immense trauma that it isn't equipped to process, it just....makes it go away. My mind has blocked out most of my memories of fourth period that day, and that's probably for the best. I do remember one thing, though; there were two students who stuck out in my mind - Steel Scythe and Silver Bit. They were both Earth ponies, and it was they who, more than anypony else, made that class miserable for me. Fortunately, the school's gendarme happened to be trotting by my classroom during their tirade and hauled them both to the front office where they were promptly transferred out of my class. Lucky for me, Sergeant Blackjack (somehow, she had legal permission to use her namesake to discipline our rowdier students) takes attempts to haze or scare off new teachers very seriously. But let me tell you why these two stuck out in my mind.
Silver Bit was a lean Earth pony, and he was really only noteworthy because he had a very loud, very dominating, and very obnoxious personality. He was a class clown in its truest form. Steel Scythe, on the other hoof, was a very large and built Earth pony with some of the most muscular legs I've ever seen on a colt his age. Not only that, but he had a very aggressive and confrontational personality. To be blunt, he scared me. I know that they would have made my life hell every day had they stayed in my class, but it honestly wouldn't have surprised me if Steel ended up seriously hurting me, or at the very least, trying to. He's just the kind of pony who gives off a nasty vibe. I don't normally get into the spiritual or metaphysical stuff - I leave that to the princesses - but I'm telling you, that pony's heart is dark.
When the last bell rang to release the students home and the day was finally over, I was happier than a foal on Hearth's Warming Day. Sitting down in my chair, I breathed a sigh of relief at having survived the first day. It was then that it clicked with me that the fist day was a Monday; I still had four more days of that shit before the weekend.
It's going to be a long year.