Surviving the Spit without Wanting to Spit

I discovered very early that my idea of 'kids' was in for a battering! Did I think it all through first? Well, yes, I thought I had. One thing I do wish I had done, and I advise you to do, if you are just starting to teach, is to keep a diary. A school diary/scrapbook with all of the funny things kids say, parents write, odd happenings. There will be millions. They will enrich your life. On the days when it really did seem all a bit of a flop, a little moment of silliness will spring out of that day and say, "Hey, there was me!"
After that first day, I thought it would get easier. My year 9 class was held in a room which conveniently stored all of the old furniture, broken chairs, subsided bookshelves. Needless to say the first fifteen minutes of each lesson was spent in finding the kids. My year 10 class, on the other hand, was a set up. All of the troubled/troublesome kids whom no-one wanted, had been put in this one. There were 32 all together and about 6 didn't have some kind of trauma/obsession/grudge. Now, you might think that was an awful thing to do to a beginning teacher and you would be right but it did teach me how to teach. Those disordered, little creatures showed me that I did have a temper, concealed for many years, and that I had qualities which supported kids. Their judgement was usually fair and always firm. I just had to emulate that and add a touch of compassion and patience. The latter turned out to be the hard part. I thought patience was listening tranquilly, smiling benignly and not swearing. It soon became clear that patience is multilayered and I had only skimmed the surface.