Blog Archive for September, 2012

Robert Rigonan is a member of the 2012 Teach For America-Las Vegas Valley corps.

In the dawn before my first day as a full-time teacher, I couldn’t help but revert to the Robert of eight years before. In my childhood, the final days of summer were spent playing video games into the early morning, sleeping in, and watching TV all day. I needed to treasure my finals moments of freedom—the calm before the storm. And every year, on the night before the first day of school , I’d have trouble sleeping, tossing and turning for hours on end. 

Luckily, I grew out of playing video games all night and watching TV all day (although I haven’t grown out of the temptation to do so). The final days before my first day of school as a teacher have been spent tackling a never-ending to-do list. Still, the strange but familiar mixture of nervous, excited, scared, and anxious that bubbled in my blood during my schoolyard days remained the same. As I finalized my syllabus, tightened up my classroom rules and procedures, and thought about how my broad classroom vision will apply to my students, my mind raced with an infinite number of thoughts and emotions. 

Credit: Eric Molina, via Flickr Creative Commons