This teaching business is stressing me out.

Oh, I love it. Don't get me wrong. But have you ever seen "Kindergarten Cop?" After his first day at Astoria Elementary, Detective John Kimble completely crashes on his bed, a casualty of one day of teaching kindergarten. When Phoebe asks him how it went, all he can muster is a meager: "Go away." Sometimes I feel like that after a day of first grade.

Other times, my brain feels like mashed potatoes, the way it sometimes does if I play solitaire on my laptop for way too long.

I used to literally hate the drive from the southside of Binghamton to Deposit and back, but right now, I think it's the only thing keeping me from hitting the bottle. After a typical day in first grade — which, for me, consists of redirecting, some more redirecting, and even more redirecting — that 30-minute drive is like my best friend in the world. I get to blast my music, sing loudly, have some valuable reflection time and unwind. If I didn't have that drive, I don't know where I'd be right now.

When I took the first-grade job, I underestimated two things: how rewarding it would be and how hard it would be. Not hard in the traditional sense, like mounds of work, unlimited hours of prep time, etc. I'm talking about what it takes out of me throughout the day.

Physically and mentally, I'm exhausted by 3 p.m. I think it has a lot to do with my style of teaching; I'm really giving it my all for the full seven hours. But is it normal to feel like I've just run a marathon when I am packing up to leave each day?

As far as the redirecting goes, I'm stumped. I kind of figured that the fact that I am 50 times the size of the kids would make classroom management sort of easy for me.

Even if it didn't (and it hasn't), I did my thesis on classroom management, so I feel like I know a thing or two about it. But it's not easy.

But I digress. It's not that the students actually are bad kids. I just have tiny people who need to talk about anything and everything besides what I am actually trying to teach them at the moment. I can't seem to keep them on task. To the students, there always seems to be something more important (cats, spiders, snow, grandparents, crayons) going on.

Maybe this is just a result of growing pains or a product of being a first-year primary teacher. Perhaps this year is a wash. Maybe I just need to lick my wounds, survive the year, learn from my mistakes, and do a better job starting next September. However, I'm not convinced that this year can't be salvaged.

Ryan Siciliano is a member of the Deposit Teachers Association who wrote this essay for his local's newsletter. It won a NYSUT Journalism Award in the "new members' issues" category.