First 10 Days of School: Routines, Relationships, and Reality Checks

This week, I've got Ann with me, and I'm excited for this conversation because she has started so many different school years in so many different kinds of systems, from higher education through elementary education, and even in preschool. The starts and restarts are very real in her career, so I'm excited to see where she takes this first 10 Days of School episode. So for you, Ann, when you are starting a new semester or kind of a new season in whatever environment that may be, what are some of the things that are must-dos for you?

One of the must-do things at the top of the list is establish a relationship with my students. No matter if they're littles or middle school, high school, university, that relationship establishment is key to making the rest of the year workable and enjoyable and productive. If I don't hook them, and kids are sharp, they can just nail you to the wall in those first 10 minutes. It doesn't take them 10 days. But if I haven't connected, the rest of the year is gonna be painful.

So what's your trick with that? I mean, how you build a relationship with a preschooler looks completely different from how you build a relationship with a university student, and especially if you've got them all day every day versus maybe only 45 minutes or an hour here or there. How do you actually build a relationship in those different age groups and those different class schedules?

The basis is the same. You see them, you greet them, you say hello, you say, "How's it going?" And no, I can't always understand my 3-year-old when I say, "How you doing? How's, how's your day?" I get a lot of “bla bla bla bla.” “Okay, sounds great.” And I pretend I know exactly what they've said. And contrast that with my university student, who I say, "How's it going?" And they go, "Yeah, uh-huh, mm-hmm." And I go, "Glad you're here." And then there's a whole range of things in between. But it's reaching out and showing an interest. Now, some days my interest is a little bit more intense than others, but I still need to show up to put forth that effort to make the connection. If I can make that connection, I've got the student.

If I don't make that connection, we're gonna be flying in a difficult zone until that connection happens. And just because it doesn't happen at the first part of the year, that doesn't keep me from trying, because it could just be that the student is getting accustomed to everything that's new in their world. I mean, some of the students, it's just a new class in a building they're familiar with. Other students, it's a completely new building, new town, new setting, so they've got a whole lot of other things that they're getting acclimated to as the school year is starting. And it may take them a little longer to get settled in at school high enough on their priority list that it's something that they can entertain.

Well, let's talk through that, because it sounds like when you're saying start with that relationship, it's also sort of sounding like you're doing that through intentionality, through showing genuine interest in each person individually, right? Understanding that we are also running entire classrooms, pushing entire groups. There are massive schedules happening. It's not this sit-down specific moments with every single kid and all of those things. It's maybe showing up just with intentionality to be able to capture those moments amidst all of the other things that we are already doing in that season. So what else is going on while you're establishing that relationship? What other types of things are you also making happen?

Well, with absolute intentionality, you build it into your day so that it just happens as a function of the day. In my preschool setting, because where I spend my time, there is no set arrival time for the students. They can filter in over a 2- or 3-hour window. So all that takes then is, as a child comes in, you greet, and you say, "Hello, how's it going?" And, you know, a 2-minute conversation, and you launch them into their day. 

When I did a 1st grade classroom, part of their homework every night was to do 10 or 15 minutes of a take-home reader book. Now, some teachers said, "Just put the book in the pile, and I'll mark off that you did your reading." I made them come to me, give me the book, and that way, it was a built-in, I accomplished an administrative thing I had to accomplish where I'm logging their reading minutes and keeping track of things, but I'm also able to look them in the face and say, "So how's it going?" And when they say, "I didn't read last night," you say, "That's fine.Do you wanna keep the book again another night, or do you wanna go on?" Because that way, you acknowledge that maybe the kid had a rough night last night.

And they have a chance then to maybe tell you of something that they thought was exciting about the book or something else that was going on that sidetracked them from school that night. But it was an intentional touch base, again, accomplishing an administrative task, but also having a 30-second conversation with each kid in the classroom. And that was part of just the morning routine in terms of logging attendance, doing lunch count, turning in homework that did truly just go in the bin, and I'll check that later. But the reading component was a way I could effectively touch base on that daily basis.

When I was up at more of a middle school setting, when you had class changes, instead of sitting at the desk organizing my brain for the section that came next, I didn't need to sit at a desk to organize my brain for the lesson that was coming up.I could do that standing at the door, greeting each student as they walked in. So that it was, again, an intentional, "Hey, glad you're here today. How's it going? Really good-looking sneaks today." Comment on something that was important to them to let them know I noticed. Because increasingly, I find a sad number of children who would rather get yelled at because they're being noticed than just go with the flow and have a conversation.

I had a conversation with a child recently where I went, "I'm watching you intentionally make choices that you know are going to cause an adult to yell. I watch you set the adult up.I watch you plan how you're gonna do it, and then I watch you execute what you plan to do. And pretty close order, the yelling of the adult follows." I said, "Do you really want the adult to yell?" And their response was, "Yes." So my response was, "Well, I'm working with you for the next few days. Let's do something differently because I don't like being yelled at, so I'm not gonna yell. I will notice what you're doing. I will comment on what you're doing. I will come over and talk to you about what you are doing, but I am not going to yell at you from across the room. So if that is the thing you're seeking, I'm letting you know now, it's not gonna happen." And he just looked at me like I had 2 heads.

I mean, you're talking about just setting expectations, not in the sense of, "When we do this activity, here's how you need to do this," but, "Here's what you can expect from me. Here's how I show up. Here is how our interactions are going to happen." That expectation, sometimes there's no words put to that. It's sort of just assumed that students figure it out or it's just part of being in space together. But I appreciate how you were like, "Well, if we're gonna work together, here's how this is gonna go." And it's on that borderline relational side, but it's also like, "Because we're here to do some things together, here's how you can expect me to get you through those things, and here's how you can expect me not to be showing up and, and getting you through those things as well."

I'm curious, as you're kicking off, if it's a, a new season or a new school year within your educational spaces, are there any of those kind of instructional routines that you are putting some words around or intentionally kind of teaching, equipping your students to be able to understand how you do that?I know in elementary schools, a lot of teachers are doing a whole lot of that at the beginning of the year. In secondary, where I was at, I mean, we were all teaching all those things because, half a dozen of us would give a test, but we would all maybe do it slightly different ways. And so, helping our students understand what it was not just what we were doing, but how we were anticipating them to engage in that with us. I think there's something to be said for just playing that game cards face up and just explicitly communicating what those pieces are. But for you, across all these different grade levels, age levels, different content, what are some of the things that you've seen be sort of a through line throughout your career?

I no longer assume that anybody knows anything inherently.

Hmm. What do you mean?

It means if you are a third-year middle schooler, I'm not going to assume that you know how to pass from class to class. I'm not going to assume that you know how to come into a classroom. If you are an elementary student in your last year in that particular school where you have been there from 3 to 5 years, I'm not going to assume that you know how to get through the lunch line, because every kid is gonna do it differently, every supervisor is gonna have different expectations, and just every child is going to "forget" how they were supposed to do things.

And if I assume somebody knows how to do something, and they're blatantly not, is that them pushing back to irritate the teacher and get yelled at, like the child I had the other day, or they're having a bad moment, and they just forgot or something in between. So all of those routines and practices that I plan to have happen on a daily basis over the course of a year, in these first 10 days, we are explicitly teaching. Everything from, "How do you line up?" I've got 5th graders who cannot get in a line. They're holding hands, they're linking arms, they're walking 3 abreast down the hallway.And I finally just turn to them and say, "If you are not looking at the back of somebody's head you are in the wrong place." So instead of an ambiguous, "Get in line" it's a directed, "Look at the back of somebody's head. If you're short, look between their shoulder blades. If you're tall, look over the top of their heads." But it's that kind of explicit, "We've not all lost our minds. We just think we have." with very explicit, "This is what we need to do. This is what these words mean. And if these words don't make sense to you, stop me now and let's make it make sense." I used a word in a lesson the other day, and it dawned on me this particular population probably didn't understand the word.So I paused the lesson. It's full stop. Said, "Do you know what this word means?" And I had 3 kids immediately say, "No, I don't."

Cool.

And I went, "Pause. This word means..." Explained it and then said, "Anytime you are listening to somebody talk, and they use a word you don't understand, ask them what it means." And if I can push that notion, that's gonna serve those students well long into adulthood. But again, it's setting those expectations that says, "In that kind of situation, it's okay to interrupt the adult. It's okay to interrupt the lesson because you're seeking clarification of what's going on, and this is how you do that." You don't jump up and down out of your seat. You don't scream and say, "Hey, what does that mean?" No. There are ways to do this.But it is appropriate to do it.

The old adage of you can't interrupt the teacher. Yeah, you can't interrupt the teacher if you don't wanna clarify your learning. But if you want to clarify your learning, which, as the teacher, I hope you do this is how we do it. So any routine from entering the classroom to start the day, to start your class period: am I at the door? Am I at the desk? Am I rotating the room? What is the student expected to do? Are they expected to come in and sit right down, or do they have a punch list of things that they need to do upon entry?

That all gets taught the first 10 days and the 30th day, and the 60th day, and the 90th day, because I don't have the same kids from day one to day 180. They're shifting and shuffling over the course of time, and all kids have bad days, and sometimes groups of kids have bad days. And we just need to pause the academic rigor and the drumbeat of, "This is your scripted curriculum. This is what you need to do. It's day 2, week 3, hour 4, March. This is what you have to be doing in this window." If my routines are out the window, that lesson is lost anyway.So trying to do academics when we don't have the systems in place, I'm gonna have to redo that academic lesson anyway when they are paying attention.

Yeah, I think what you're communicating here, maybe not putting words to it, is establishing the expectation that we learn here, right? Like, it's okay to interrupt me. Here's how you can go about the different activities so that you can learn, and I'm here to support you so that you can learn. All of these things are just driving back to the big idea of, "In my classroom, you will learn. We will figure out how that happens, and you'll learn what I'm okay with, and I'll learn what you need. But in my room, in this class, you're gonna learn." And I love that you give all these different examples of how you're just setting up that space, setting up those expectations, those norms, those routines, those rhythms so that learning can happen.

But you're also talking about some students who maybe have not figured out how to communicate what they need well yet, or they've got some of the behavior pieces. I know you have done amazing work with students with all kinds of complex needs. So, how are you building in things like predictability or safety. Like, how are you building that into the first few couple weeks or few days that you're working with specifically, these tough kids that are tucked into these larger groups that you are trying to establish these relationships and the expectation that we are all going to learn here? How do you also start to make sense of and meet those needs of those more complex kids too?

Most of the complex kids I have encountered have a degree of complexity because they have learned they can outlast almost any adult in their universe.

Yeah, that's fair.

I won't talk loudly at them. I try really hard not to have a whole bunch of words. I try to keep my sentences short, direct, succinct. And from day one, I try to establish that I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. I've had a couple of kids ask me questions where what they're asking me is very reasonable to say yes to, but there are some scheduling, school rule, policy issues where I'm going, "Okay, on those things, I ought to say no, but I don't like those rules either." And I don't answer the child right away, and they sit there, and they look at me.And in establishing some of those early relationships, I explicitly say, "I'm not ignoring your question. I am thinking about my answer. Because I'm not gonna give you the first off-the-cuff answer that pops in my brain. I want to give you a useful and thoughtful answer, and it just takes me a few minutes to decide what that answer is going to be."

And almost every student I've ever addressed that way, 'cause they're used to instant answers. I mean today's society is instant everything, and you don't get an instant. And they look at me like, "Well, what's your problem, miss?" And I give them that explanation, and they have kind of an aha look on their face.And then typically they're more receptive to the answer I give them because I've had a chance to think through my answer and why that is the answer.

And I would say almost especially, even if it's an answer that they don't want, they're more able to process through than even receiving an answer that maybe wasn't what they were hoping for, too. 'Cause it wasn't just that reactive response.

And in those first interactions, I'm going to demonstrate to the student, "Yes, I can outlast you. Yes, I am interested in what you have to say. Yes, I am going to listen. There's gonna be a response, and then we're gonna follow through." One of the most challenging things I typically found in my first month of primary kids was that you would be doing a particular task, and you had the child who was, "I'm not doing it." And I would never get into a push-and-shove with, "I'm not doing it." I would look at them and say, "Here's your choice. You may do it now with the rest of the students when we are talking about the answers and the answers to the task are readily available, or you can stay in at your recess time and complete it. You may choose.It really does not matter a whole lot to me which choice you make, but those are the 2 options."

And with some of my students, it took 2 or 3 repetitions of recess time came, they went to put their coats on, and I went, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.You told me you were going to do that at recess." And they went, "But I wanna go to recess." I said, "I believe you. I wanna go too. But you made this choice, so this is what you need to do." And they still, you know, with the coat. I said, "You picked." And most students have trouble pushing back when they can concede, "Crud, I did make that choice." And after about the second time where they've connected the dots, when I give you that choice, and I mean what I say that's how the outcome is gonna go. And I could never get into a push-and-shove contest on that because all I had to do was stand there, shrug my shoulders with a, "Hey, this was your choice. I didn't pick it." And then they're like, no words, clenched fists, clenched teeth, "Ah!" And then we moved on.

Yeah. So I know you're talking about these moments that many times go other directions. If the exact same situation would be playing out with maybe a different staff member that's not you or maybe in a different relational context that is not what you've been talking about, how you build that from the very beginning of getting to know a student, a class at the beginning of a year or semester, whatever that season may be. How do you course correct when you're thinking that that's the outcome you're going to get and it doesn't, right? And this could be anything. Like, when you're expecting, "Hey, this is, this is just... You made your choices. This is how this happens here," and you're approaching it from that calm, cool, collected demeanor, and the student doesn't just concede or the student doesn't kind of have their own aha and then follow through, then-

You mean when they lay down on the floor and kick and scream?

Sure. But, like, how do you course correct that then? Because you've got this plan, you're thinking it's headed in that direction, and then it doesn't.

Mm-hmm. And we all have moments in life where we melt down. That is part of humanity. We are not calm and cool and organized all the time. There are days when I just am like, "Are you kidding me?" We have done XYZ 58 times, and this is number 58, maybe 5,800, and I've kind of had it. But those are the times when, as the adult in the room, I need to take a breath, and if the student is going to have a complete and utter meltdown, as long as they are not being unsafe to themselves and unsafe to somebody else, I'm going to let them sit there and scream and not engage.

Every now and again, I will sort of poke in and say, "Are you ready to have a conversation yet?" And if they're still screaming, I say, "Doesn't look like it," and walk away and give them space to regroup. I'm not going to hover, because when somebody is melting down, they don't need a hoverer. But they need some skills that allow them to start to regroup and connect, because there's no point in talking to a melting-down individual, because their brain is not wired to listening mode at that point. So, there's no point in doing anything other than reaching out, saying, "I'm still here. I'm interested.Let me help. Can you give me some guidance on how I can help you?" For some of my screaming preschoolers, they're melting down, I simply say, "How can I help?" Not, "What's wrong?" Not, "What do you need?" Just, "How can I help?" And it's a question they're not used to processing.

Agreed. I did that the whole way through secondary, where clearly communicating in one way or another that they are not okay, and I would just be like, "I can see you're not okay. How can I help? What do you need?" I'm not going to take any guesses, and I'm going to take whatever the answer is that they give me, and then we'll figure it out from there. But yeah, I think there's just something to be said for putting the ball back in their court, that, yes, I am the adult, I'm the staff, I'm the teacher, I am that person in charge in whatever capacity that may be, but we're also in this together.

So, I appreciate how you've been calling out relational capacity, making sure that that is built from that foundation of intentionality and genuine interest in your students, that any routine or rhythm that you are building is really just setting up the opportunity for us to learn here, or the expectation that we learn here. But with all of the things that you're talking about, and even considering our complex students or ones that don't always go as planned, I think especially this time of year, there are so many things flooding social media or back-to-school, new teacher orientation. There's all of this information of, like, here is the massive list of all of the things that you have to do, because if you don't do that in the first 10 days, then the whole year's going to be crazy.

There's a lot of pressure on all of these things that we're supposed to be doing, and I appreciate that that's not how you have approached this conversation. I'm curious for you: is there anything that you intentionally don't do in the first 10 days, where it may be common guidance or wisdom or that kind of thing, but maybe in your career it just hasn't shaken out that way? Or things that people are typically saying, "This needs to happen in the first 10 days," and maybe you have a different view?

In my last several years in primary grades, we were increasingly given structured curriculum and told, "This is the marching orders for when you will cover each of these particular lessons over the course of time." Always in the first 10 days, when you add your academic tasks plus your behavior expectations, plus that's when they threw in, "We're going to give you 20 days of SEL instruction, and that's going to fix everybody for the year," there truly were not enough hours in the day to accomplish all of those tasks. It was just not physically possible. So, what I wound up doing was prioritizing those things that were going to set us up for success for the rest of the year.

The underpinning of that was first and foremost, establishing the relationship with the students. Next came establishing expectations. And I learned really early on, and totally reinforced in the last 6 or 7 years, that I no longer tell a student to stop doing something. "Stop tapping your pencil. Stop rocking your chair. Stop running across the room." I don't use that language anymore. Instead, I'll say, "Lay your pencil on your desk. Walk slower across the room." So that I'm no longer giving a negative direction, so they have to guess what the right thing is. I'm explicitly telling them what my expectation is and setting everything we're going to need to do successfully on a day-to-day basis to get to that curriculum list that I challenge any administrator to actually get all of those things done in a day. And then you start getting creative with how you then include the curriculum components into the teaching of the routines.

So that if I'm teaching a routine for how do we do the reading lesson, what order do we take things out, put things away, where do we keep our materials, how do we store our materials? That's all done in the context of a lesson. So that I'm not making the stuff up- I'm just applying the routines I want them to remember that will make the classroom work more smoothly to real examples of the lessons that we're going to need to work on. So, it's a matter of prioritizing those things that are going to make learning possible.

Yeah, it's such a long tenure, long view, that you're bringing. Because so often, like I said, there's these lengthy lists of... You know, especially, like, social media's full of this stuff this time of year, where it's like, "Here's all the different cool tips and tricks and things to do and all the ways that you can set up your room and all..." Like, all of that stuff. And I appreciate that you're just kind of cutting through all of that noise and saying, "Look, when you get 4, 5, 6, 7 months down the road, what is going to get you there?Just do that." 

That alone, and those are somewhat those intangibles. There are specific strategies that create relationships. There are certain strategies that establish routines in terms of, like, how you're doing that. So, yes, those things exist, but I appreciate that you're saying, like, "That's not some magical checklist of you just do all of these things and then this stability just appears within your instructional day." There are some ways that you can just establish foundational understandings, and from there, your entire year will figure itself out.

I can poke my eyes out doomscrolling through TikTok and Pinterest and all of the other sites out there that have wonderful videos, ideas, interests for teachers. And if you're doing this, it's absolutely gonna work and be fantastic. And then you try it, and I don't know of maybe 10% of the time where some beautiful Pinterest project actually turned out the way it looked on the Pinterest site. Oh, okay, it looked really cute online, but that's not the way it worked for me. And I find some of those same things happen with all of the social media presence of, "Do this, and your classroom will be amazing." I appreciate some ideas, but at the end of the day, if I wrap my brain around all of those different things, my brain will explode.

Yeah, there's just, there's no way. And they exist on lists for reasons, but I appreciate that you're looking at it from the yes now, but also long term. It's not just this month and how do we use this month. It's what are we doing within this month that is going to set us up for months, years ahead. Those are the bigger concepts that some of these smaller strategies can attach to and as part of making that possible. But it's just, it's that long-tenure voice that I think is just showing up so strongly through you right now, where it's not all the bells and whistles and all the cool tricks. It's like there are just some solid foundational components, and if you can get that to happen, everything else is figure-outable.

And to some extent, all of the glitz and snazzy and fancy stuff have the foundation at their base anyway. It's just a different way of packaging.

Exactly. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really appreciate you bringing your voice to the table on this, especially since you're right at the very beginning of the school year. There is so much noise and so many things to do and all of the demands and expectations that are put on us as educators and staff within our school spaces. Thank you for just cutting through the noise and re-leveling on what's actually important and what will then support us in getting through the rest of the school year. So thank you so much.

You're very welcome. And to all of the staff and educators who are out there every day slogging away doing the job, thank you so much for your efforts. I know we don't often hear that, but there are many corners in which you are absolutely appreciated, whether you hear that regularly or not.

So true. Thank you, thank you.