If you wanted to know what the first year of teaching school is like, you'd ask teachers who just completed their first year on the job. This book attempts to capture the fascinating and inspiring answers of exemplary first-year teachers to some key questions: What was it like the first year? What were your toughest challenges, your greatest rewards? Did you get the right preparation? Do you have any insights you could offer new teachers? These teachers, all winners of the First Class Teacher Award sponsored every year by Sallie Mae, a corporation dedicated to education, talked in frank terms about what it's like to feel rebuffed by veteran teachers, to struggle with budget cutbacks, to see children in distress. But the obstacles they related are only half the story. They also told us how they surmounted challenges, what they would want new teachers to know, and why being a teacher is so crucial to their sense of self. All together, their words paint a picture of an inspired and inspiring group of up-and-coming leaders in their profession. We believe their reflections will prove helpful to principals, administrators, university professors in education departments, and particularly, new teachers who are gearing up to face the first day of school.