The First Day in the Classroom, Post-Sandy During this hurricane, my family was among the lucky. No flood. No fires. While our power didn't go out, we felt powerless, anxiously wanting to find ways to help. So when the school where I teach emailed to say we'd be re-opening last Friday, I couldn't wait to get back. After four days away from classes, I was itching to get back to teaching. I arrived prepared to get my middle school students back to working and thinking. But I wasn't prepared for how they would express their feelings. The first student to arrive bounded in the door, and couldn't wait to tell me about how frightened he had been when his bedroom window cracked during the storm. But another waited nearly the whole day before telling the class the harrowing tales of the losses her family had suffered. Her story finally came bursting out between fits of giggles. "Why are you laughing?" her classmates demanded, confused. How can you laugh about something so terrible? Most of my students had simply been cooped up for five days, experiencing incalculable losses through the veil of a TV screen. They had a hard time understanding what others had gone through, or why someone might giggle uncontrollably while sharing a heartbreaking story. As the day wore on, I discovered that the kids who had spent the week without power, who were displaced by rising water, or who had seen significant property damage had little ability to do schoolwork. They craved the comfort only their friends could provide, but actual focused learning was impossible. They arrived without their homework, despite having been out of school for a full week. Despite my repeated reminders, they kept getting up and wandering around the classroom. I'll admit it: my patience and enthusiasm began to fray. Until I realized: those kids didn't need my lessons. Not right away. Instead they needed school as a refuge. Refuge from dark stairways and flashlights. Refuge from schlepping wet cardboard boxes out of basements. Refuge from a week of cold dinners and no showers. Our school was dry, warm, well lit, and normal, and they needed simply to be there. Despite the awful days and dark nights some of them had lived through, my students and I were all astonishingly lucky: none of us lost homes or loved ones. But emotionally, my students were all over the map, and before I could teach anything, or get them to empathize with one another, I needed to understand where they had been and what they had gone through. Parents affected by the storm are eager to get our kids back to school. But when the vast majority of students return on Monday morning, they will be distracted, confused, silly, messy, sad, clueless, angry, hungry, tired, scared, antsy, narcissistic, funny, grateful, dirty, and everything in between. We've all been confused by this tragedy, but kids are even less emotionally equipped to handle it. Unless we teachers are allowed and encouraged to take the time to listen to our students, we may have no way of knowing who spent a week cooped up on a high floor of an apartment building with no heat or hot water. We can't know whose stoop was lapped by waves Sunday night, and inundated Monday morning, or whose apartment was looted. It will take time for us to unravel what they're saying through their giggles, silences, awkward remarks, and misbehavior. Kids will also need their teachers' help to understand what has unfolded in other people's houses and neighborhoods. While adolescents are not typically renowned for empathy, they can learn if we model it. Some schools are still soaked by seawater or destroyed by waves and will have to be relocated. On Monday, when the vast majority of New York City's schools reopen, many of my fellow teachers won't be able to get to work, still stuck at the wrong end of an impossible commute. Many teachers will have been without power themselves. Thousands of students and teachers are still without heat, hungry, exhausted, frightened or even homeless because of the storm. When teachers can get back to their classrooms, they'll need compassion, patience, and enormous amounts of understanding if they're going to be able to show it to their students. When the shelters close and the rest of New York City's schools are able to open, students and teachers alike will need help getting on the same page before they open up a book.