Thoughts on the first day of school

I visited Mr. Borton's first hour class on the first day of school. The kids were all sheepish and quiet and considerate, I was amazed! Later on I was talking to Mr. Jedin, who I did a lot of my clinicals with last semester. He laughed and said how much he loved the first week because the kids were so good. It seemed to take about two weeks for the smart-alecy's to start shining through but you can't miss them now - although they aren't as bad as I was expecting with the sixth graders (I think they are worse by 7th). The first day Mr. Borton talked and the kids pretty much listened. We went over the rules(which took about 2 minutes). Then Mr. Borton described the how-to's on how to take notes, where to write your name on the paper, the procedures for borrowing pencils, etc. With sixth graders it seems to require a lot of investment in describing procedures and other "simple" things which are not even discussed in later grades. It is sometimes challenging for me personally to describe things in adequately simple terms for sixth graders, although I've already been stumped more than once by a really smart little girl.