August

• On day one, be seen taking your students out for a walk. Send a message. The message is: Here I am. Also: This is not a big deal.
• When you return to the classroom, don’t explain the transcendentalist implications of the walk. You are not, after all, John Keating from Dead Poets Society.
• Don’t object to the comparison.
• Tell students you don’t do icebreakers. Discuss yourself.
• When you run out of things to say, open it up for questions. Tell them nothing is off limits.
• When they ask about your relationship status, move to an icebreaker.

September

• Arrange the desks in a circle. Tell students there’s no hierarchy in this class.
• Sit at the head of the circle.
• Riff.
• Pause.
• Take questions.
• Repeat.
• Tell the students you won’t be assigning "homework" or "tests" this year. Tell them there won’t be "grades," and there won’t even really be "class."
• Pause to let this sink in.
• Wonder: What the hell am I saying?

October

• Show up late to class.
• Dump your bag on the floor.
• Don’t sit down.
• Sit down.
• Correct students as they read aloud.
• Joke, like, all the time.
• Get angry.
• Threaten to flip out.
• Never do.
• Once a week, have them get up with their things and switch seats.

November

• Be seen by students while smoking a cigarette at the bus stop.
• Sit with students at lunch.
• Bald interestingly.
• Blow off a staff meeting.
• Blow off a department meeting.
• Blow off a teacher-mentor meeting. Your friends who have real jobs, they don’t go to "meetings." Well, they do, but…

December

• Wear eyeliner to the winter faculty gala. Leave ten minutes in.
• Submit that awesome poem you wrote in college to the school literary magazine.
• Boycott the school literary magazine.
• Threaten to hijack the school literary magazine.
• When your teacher-mentor says kids today don’t "get it" like they used to, think: Shut up…
• When the students turn in their Catcher in the Rye papers, promise to return them after winter break.

January

• Return from winter break with a scarf.
• Have graded zero papers.
• Switch to assigned seating.
• Sit alone at lunch.
• Hold office hours in the bleachers on a gray day.
• Claim to see a student’s hand in the air.
• Claim you’ll get to him in a second.
• Never do.
• Defend any accusation with "Dude…"
• When the students ask, "When are we getting our papers back?" laugh out loud.
• Go to odd lengths to reveal your tattoo.
• When your students don’t ask you about it, say, "Class dismissed."

February

• When word comes down that you’ll be fired unless you grade the Catcher in the Rye papers, grade them. What the hell. It’s your "job," after all.
• As you come to the end of each paper, salute it. Put letter grades in quotation marks.
• Wear jeans under your slacks.

March

• Consider quitting the profession.
• Consider graduate school.
• Consider your finances.
• Have the students read silently for an entire class period.
• Sit in a daze.
• Out of nowhere, open the book and start reading.
• Close by asserting some of your opinions. Ask a student what they think.

April

• Chaperone a dance. When you see a group of kids huddling around a boy and a girl, get in there.
• Say, "Break it up."
• Say, "That’s not a toy."
• Report the incident to the dean.
• Sit with a drunk student in an empty science lab while the dean calls the kid’s parents. Layer the student’s desk with paper towels.

May

• Concede to baldness by shaving your head.
• Set up your voicemail.
• Join the disciplinary committee.
• Agree to mentor a hotshot rookie next fall.

June

• As you close the final class meeting of the year, hold for applause.
• When it doesn’t happen, wait for the students to stand on their desks.
• When they don’t, exit in silence.
• Return to get your bag.

July

• Consider writing a memoir about your teaching experiences.
• Consider writing a how-to book about writing the memoir.
• Abandon the memoir.
• Query an agent for the how-to book.

August

• Return from summer break with a beard.
• Pose for the staff ID.
• Join a carpool.
• Go on a blind date.
• Apply for the GAP credit card.
• Explain to the hotshot rookie that students these days don’t "get it" like they used to.
• Abandon the carpool.
• Claim to have found romance on the bus.
• Start taking the bus again.
• Seek romance.
• Get easy things wrong. Give students the thrill of correcting you.
• Answer a student’s cell phone to wild approval.
• Clip your ID to a lanyard.
• Layer it over your tie.
• Threaten to retire.
• Never do.
• Sit with the faculty at lunch.
• Straddle the chair.