First Day

Today is the first day of school.

I can’t even imagine how many first days of school I’ve had in my life. First days as a child. First days as an adult. First days as a student. First days as an educator. And then there have been all the first days I’ve experienced as a parent—getting my son ready, watching him head off to another new school year, and realizing how quickly those years were passing.

And now, somehow, it is his senior year.

At the same time, this is my 30th first day as an educator.

I started out kind of backwards. I began working with college students, then worked my way down to elementary students and eventually across K–12. Thirty years. Thirty first days.

But this morning I started thinking about what actually makes a first day successful.

The key to a great first day is making it to the second day.

And then the third.

A school year is about 180 days. You don’t have to make all 180 days great today. You just have to live today, find something good in it, and then come back tomorrow.

So I’m trying something this year.

Every day, I’m going to write down one thing that went well. I’ll put the date and what happened on a little piece of paper and drop it into a bucket or some kind of container in my office.

If I keep doing that, by the end of the school year I’ll have 180 reminders of things that went well along the way.

Thirty years into education, with my son beginning his senior year, I’m realizing just how many first days I’ve lived through. They come, they feel enormous for a moment, and then life keeps moving.

So that’s my goal for today.

Have the first day. Find what went well. And come back tomorrow.

Because a great first day is having a second.

What went well today that you haven’t stopped to name?