Fiction Friday - The First Day

 

DeLuca sat up straight in his chair. He took a deep breath and assessed his mental situation.

Calm. Centered. Controlled.

His meditation period was over. 

It was the first day of school and all the experienced teachers had warned him that the hardest part was controlling your own mind. A wandering mind while trying to infuse information into the young malleable minds in his care could be disastrous.

Ever since the pandemic in the early 21st century made distance learning readily available to the masses, technology had grown so that no one sat in classrooms like in ancient times. Everyone connected their brains through the net plan. DeLuca had a special chair that framed his skull and projected the lesson from his mind to his students. It was critical he stay on task. 

Children had something like electrodes tethering them to a work station where they could jot down notes to keep their brains focused. They were trained to learn without the tether during a special term in middle school, when students had to learn to do it mind to mind.

They got frequent breaks. That was nice. Focusing too intensely on one thing could create catastrophic brain-drain. 

Even with frequent breaks, a teacher's work was never done, and so controlling his mind was critical. Many new teachers had breakdowns on the first day. DeLuca didn't want to be one of them.  

It was almost time. He sat in his designated chair and leaned back, opening the "classroom" on his center's net plan. Local students began connecting and he could take roll. Focus. Focus. Focus.

It's FICTION FRIDAY!

Every Friday I write a new flash fiction piece. This story was inspired by the prompt "A new teacher's first day" given by Liz A. of Laws of Gravity, in a comment on my previous story, here. If you have a writing prompt you'd like to see turned into a story, just leave it in a comment.