The first week

Like in most other districts, the teachers where I work start the school year a full week before the kids. Non-teachers always ask me just what the hell we do all week, and then, before they let me answer, they speculate on our opening week activities.

"I guess you get your room all ready and make some lesson plans and stuff like that, huh."

I start to tell them what really goes on, but I refrain, as these people are usually hardworking taxpayers who maintain the belief that high schools are filled with dedicated, diligent teachers who use every free moment figuring out ways to make education dynamic. Yeah, and the kids are going to just eat up the stellar lesson plan I have ready for tomorrow.

Let me fill you in on some of the more productive activities I engaged in during last week's five-day teacher circle jerk:

• Since I get to school between 6:15 and 6:30 every day of the regular school year, I use this kid-free week to purposely come in a few minutes late, just because I can. We're supposed to be there at 7:30 on these days, so I routinely drag it through the door around 8:00, hoping to god some finger-pointing busybody will make a sarcastic comment about my tardiness so that I can savage her with a devastatingly harsh putdown that will ensure that this person never makes the mistake of cracking pseudo-wise to me again. But alas, I never get that chance, because most of the staff is stuffing their already fat faces with the free breakfast spread in the cafeteria.

• I avoid this daily caloric nightmare with the same gusto with which I avoid making lesson plans. Some days, the administration goes all out and prepares eggs, sausage, bacon and every other type of the heart ravaging American breakfast fare that has rendered half the staff the size of John Daly, should he ever let himself go. Some days find only donuts, bagels and fruit. On these "light" breakfast days, take a guess at which of those three items gets eaten the least, sitting mostly untouched at the end of the table throughout the day. (Hint: It's the one not made from dough.)

• I attend the opening meeting, at which time all the new staff members are introduced. This takes forever, as we always hire over 20 new teachers to replace those teachers smart enough to join the annual mass exodus. In the past, this used to be one of the highlights of returning to school, as checking out all the cute new female teachers was always fraught with the possibility of new November pussy. However, now that I'm middle-aged (and I'm talking Neil Young craggy-faced, stringy thin hair middle aged, not George Clooney or Brad Pitt still-making-the-twats-hot middle aged), I don't even bother to turn around to look at the cute young teachers whose pussies I'll never get to sample. I'm a realist, not a masochist.

• I grab the school calendar and take it to my room to begin planning. No, not lessons, silly. That would be work. Instead, I plot out all the three-day weekends and the longer Spring and Christmas breaks, and then I start planning vacations and weekend getaways. I log on to Expedia and check out hotels, flights, and restaurants. After exchanging some emails with Mrs. Bitters, I'll go ahead and plan two or three weekend trips and perhaps a Spring Break trip. In the meantime, I still have no idea what I'm doing in class the first week of school. But I'll know damn well where I'll be on the first five days of Spring Break.

• I start roaming the halls looking for conversation, which might be my most desperate move of the week, because I pretty much hate socializing. However, I hate planning lessons even more, so I drag my increasingly unsociable ass all over the building looking for people to talk to. With the new teachers, I ask the same three innocuous questions: Where are you from, where did you go to school, and where are you living? (When I was younger, "Do you like to get fucked from behind?" was also one of the questions I'd ask new teachers, and while it sometimes got some positive responses, too often it would result in a punch to the head. But some guys are just hot tempered, I guess.) I'll search out the returning teachers whom I really enjoy talking to. After I find those four people, I'll strike up conversations with people I don't like so much, as even that beats actually planning lessons. This does not include our bitch of a librarian. Forced to choose between talking to her and planning a knockout lesson on the compound sentence, I'm heading to my keyboard for all the boredom that attends the planning of grammar lessons.

• I attend 147 other meetings throughout the week, three of which are useful. Here's what I need to know: I want to know if I have a duty and what it entails (meaning, can I skip it a lot without being caught?); I want to know how the new schedule affects my 30-minute duty-free lunch; I want to know just how serious the administration is about cracking down on tardies this year. For this last item, I gauge their seriousness, then predict when I will stop adhering to the policy (Oct. 4) and when the bulk of the staff will do likewise (Jan. 22). I also enjoy the way a half dozen hardliners ask questions and point fingers at the rest of the staff for never following through on each year's new (but not really all that much different from last year's) Tardy Reduction Plan for the entire year. This display of righteous indignation makes subverting the policy that much more rewarding.

• I try to keep track of how many times the following words and phrases are used during the week: "Exciting"- 47. "Refreshed" - 38. "How was your summer?" - 98, including six by the alcoholic social studies teacher who keeps forgetting that he asks me this every time he runs into me, then neglects to truly listen to my answer, because his brain if fucking fried. "Face many challenges" - 32, although I am never quite sure what those challenges are, as I zone out five minutes into every meeting. "We have a lot of work to do this year" - 37, although I don't include myself in that we. "Great crop of new teachers" - 8. It used to be said more, but we all know better, as we get one or two wunderkinds and the rest suffer through the typical first-year nine-month disaster.

• I huddle with other veterans and try to predict which new teacher will be the first to quit mid-year. We factor in criteria such as a timid gait, a scared voice, the lack of facial hair and a precious naive belief that they are about to embark on a 30-year odyssey of making a difference in kids' lives. This last item carries the most weight in our betting schemes, as the more starry-eyed the teacher, the sooner the departure of said teacher from the building, usually in tears.

• I sit in my room and dream of the summer that just passed, reliving countless moments that seemed so mundane at the time but now seem sublime. I use these memories to remind myself of just why the hell I do a job I basically hate. I get back on Expedia and see if I can find travel rates for next summer, even though it is still this summer, which gives me a needed boost of energy, which motivates me to ... no, not to plan lessons. Please. It gives me the energy to run up the guidance office to ask the secretary to look up the schedules of two or three students of the flaming asshole variety to see if I have them in my classes this year. That bump you see on my head was suffered when I banged it on the ceiling jumping for joy when I saw that Naylon Stevens (yes, of course the name is made up) was going to inflict his daily dose of classroom trauma on my buddy down the hall this year.

• I finally arrange the desks in room, trying to create some tricky layout instead of the boring old six straight rows. I rearrange the desks six times before deciding on this year's setup, which I'll trash after four weeks because the cool setup enables the kids to fuck around too much.

• I enjoy eating lunch each day in a normal fashion, which means taking a bite of food, chewing said bite, swallowing said bite, then slowly repeating this process. This method of eating is impossible during the school year, as the 30-minute, school day lunch entails shoveling food into one's mouth and barely chewing anything, then running to the restroom to take a piss, then running to the office to check my mailbox, then answering three parent emails ("Yeah, your kid's a smart, personable fellow who is doing just fine in class," I lie), and then preparing for the afternoon classes.

• Friday comes and I finally sit down at my computer and begin working ... on this column. I leave school with no idea what I'm going to do on the first day of classes. (But I know it will not be one of the six standard getting-to-know-you activities that every other teacher in the building does in a predictable fit of uncreativity.) I go home Friday with a growing sense of panic.

• I spend the ride home wondering why our No Child Left Behind test scores were so bad last year.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.