Teachers recall 1st days

Some were excited, others were nervous, embarrassed

The first day of school is a rite of passage we all experience.

For some, it's a day preceded by a sleepless night and an inability to eat because of stomach-twisting nerves. For others, it's like waking up on Christmas morning; the day just can't get here soon enough.

School begins this week for children across the Lowcountry, and memories of these next few days will last for decades.

We asked area educators to recount stories from their first day of school, whether from kindergarten, middle school or college. Here is what they had to say:

Mahwish McIntosh, an English teacher at Goose Creek High School in Berkeley County, described her first day of class at the College of Charleston as "both exciting and nerve-racking." She wanted to make a good first impression on her professors and be on time, so a few days before class began, she timed herself to see how long it would take to walk from her dorm to each class.

That first day, she waited nervously at the crosswalk on St. Philip Street to cross Calhoun Street, and she felt relief after she made it across in one piece.

"Just as I started making my way to class, 'SPLAT!'", she wrote. "I tripped on a brick that decided to claim me as its next unassuming victim, and my fall was made worse by all my books crashing down on me, reassuring me my fall would not just be

monumental, but a show for all. The worst part about my fall? Not one person helped me, or asked if I was OK. Everyone just kept walking. I was mortified."

To this day, she wrote that she always looks down when she walks in downtown Charleston. "You never know when a brick will decide to become best friends with your face," she wrote.

Annie Hurt, parenting coordinator for Berkeley schools, remembers in detail her first day of first grade. She loved the color red, and she wore new shoes — red ones that tied — and a new red sweater.

Her school was so small that her teacher, Ms. Ball, taught first- graders, second-graders, and third-graders all in the same classroom.

"It was a fascinating experience, with three or more lessons going on all the time," she wrote. "While I was practicing writing my name ever so neatly, I also listened and learned about the continents and oceans of the world as Mrs. Ball worked with students of another grade. … I thought everything about school was very special, very clean and orderly; the individual desks, the fat new pencils, the crayons with perfect tips, and the rainbow-colored art paper."

For Jenny Tuthill, a second-grade teacher at Laurel Hill Primary School in Charleston County, the first day of school included a family ritual started by her mom. Tuthill and her younger brother would dress up in their new outfits and stand on the front porch of their suburban Chicago home for a picture. The tradition continued until Tuthill finished high school, she said, and her family has an album now of all the pictures from those first days.

Her mom then would take her to school, which was a special time because every other day of the year they would walk, she said. She remembers feeling excited and nervous about whether she would fit in or whether she would know anyone. On her first day as a teacher, she still felt excited and nervous, but that was because she wondered whether students would behave and do their work or whether she'd be able to inspire them to love school, she said.

Pam Bailey, spokeswoman for Berkeley County schools, remembers feeling "humiliation" on her first day of school 55 years ago. The night before her first-grade debut, her mother decided to roll her naturally straight hair so that it would have "pretty curls" for pictures on the first day. To make that happen, Bailey had to sleep with hard, pink rubber curlers in her hair. During the night, the curlers on the left side of her head "somehow" came unwound.

"In the morning, I had a right side of pretty curls and a left side of frizz," she wrote. "That was my first, memorable, bad hair day. Wonder why it took so long for someone to invent the curling iron?"

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