Being a Teacher

First Day Welcome to room 227. This is where dreams come true, birds can swim and the fish can fly as high as the sun. I say this to the class and they look at as if I'm wearing a rainbow Afro, red nose and pair of shoes that eight sizes too big. Well class my roster said there were going to be twenty students so I got twenty- five desks but as I look around the classroom they're ten students standing on the wall. Pretending to be wallflowers and I can sense that they are just as scared as me. My name is Ms. Hagen but you can call me Teach. They begin to laugh and I can feel the ice breaking. Teach is the name my dad gave me as a kid. I would play pretend school with my dolls while my brothers were outside playing football, hurting themselves for reasons that I have yet to figure out. I can see from the corner of my eye a ninth grader beginning to open his mouth. “Yo teach, we not trying to hear about dolls.” And my heart dropped in fear as the whole room began to open their mouth inviting their opinions to fall in my ears like false hope. “What's your name?” I say this to the student who was brave enough to speak first.