Prompt – Your first day of school that you truly remember.
The first day of school that I truly remember was fourth grade, and the memory was all due to Mrs. Blue, my new teacher. I came into that year riding the high of third grade with Ms. Mullings, a teacher who made the classroom feel alive and safe at the same time. Learning had felt expansive. Mistakes were part of the process. Curiosity was welcomed. And I am sure she was a witch – both a real witch and a good witch. There were big shoes to fill, but Mrs. Blue arrived wearing none of them. She could not find the stride, the rhythm, or the balance required to lead a room full of children. What she brought instead was pain, grief, and an atmosphere so tight with fear that it pressed against my chest before the first recess of the year.
Her classroom had rules. Rules stacked on rules. Rules with no context and no grace. On the first morning, we were seated quickly and told to listen. This was not an invitation. It was a warning. She began listing expectations of the classroom as if reading a rap sheet of a lifetime criminal. Sit this way. Speak this way. Do not do this. Do not do that. The room grew smaller with every sentence.
Then she introduced the concept of “bad words.” Words we were never to say. She told us there would be zero tolerance for language that did not belong in her classroom. What counted as a bad word, however, was not left to interpretation. She turned to the board and began writing them out in chalk, one by one, with a precision that felt practiced. Fuck. Shit. Ass. Asshole. Bastard. Bitch. Damn. Piss. Dick. Cock. Motherfucker. Prick. Douchebag. Jackass. The list kept growing, long past the point of instruction and well into spectacle. Even sailors would have felt seen.
I sat there stunned. My house rarely swore. My father believed swearing disrespected the uniform, whatever the fuck that meant. Hearing those words written so boldly on a school chalkboard felt illicit and dangerous, like being handed contraband and told not to touch it.
When her imagination finally ran dry, she turned back to us and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer additional bad words she might have missed. She reminded us we were not supposed to say them, which meant no one moved. Fear had already done its work. Eventually, a few hands went up, tentative and shaking, offering words like they were confessions.
Then I raised my hand.
When she called on me, I volunteered “rat bastard.” Mrs. Blue wrote it on the board just as she had with the other words.
That was the first day of school I remember clearly.
Now, as an educator, I think back to what Ms. Blue taught me, even if she never meant to. She taught me how fear shuts down learning. She taught me how control masquerades as structure. She taught me that classrooms are laboratories, and what we model becomes the experiment. I did not learn fourth grade content that day. I learned how not to teach. And some lessons, once learned, never fucking leave.
Muddled Soma 