A critical teacher-skill is welcoming students as they enter your class each day. According to instructional leaders and classroom-management experts, you should stand in the doorway, greet them with a big idiot’s grin on your face, call them by name, if you can, and shake their hands if you can, pulling them into your classroom as if they are certainly doomed to be there even if they accidentally walked into the wrong classroom. I realize now that I am retired, how much I miss that ritual.
“Good morning, Sasha. How nice to see you this wonderful day.”
“Hi, Mr. B. Are we going to learn anything today?”
“Of course we are! Wonderful things! You are going to learn the most important lesson of your life today.”
“What lesson is that?”
“That we need to learn something each and every day.”
“Oh, great… yeah.”
“Ola, El Gongie, kay-paw-so, my dude!”
“Ay, vato… remember, you gotta address me like the OG I am. If I gotta respect you, you gotta show proper respect for me and my reputation, dude.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought that’s what I was doing. What did I get wrong?”
“Nothing, my dude. I am jes messin’ wit you. Gotta remind you to do it right.”
“Marissa, good morning! So nice to see you and your smiling face.”
“Don’t talk to me, Beyer. I’m mad at you right now.”
“Oh? What did I do now?”
“You didn’t do anything, but I’m not talking to you today.”
“So, you’ll yell at me about something later?”
“Yeah. But I won’t yell. I just need to talk to you… later.”
“Okay, right after class, just stay put when the bell rings.”
“In front of your next class?”
“No, they can wait outside the door for a minute or two.”
“Ruben! Good morning!”
“Hello, Mr. B. I read that book you lended me yesterday.”
“All in one evening?”
“It was only 200 pages. I read five times that in a week.”
“Well, that’s good. What did you think?”
“It was awful. No way it shoulda ended the way it did. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and then I reached the last ten pages, and I almost threw it out the window. Except I still had to read the last nine pages.”
“So, you didn’t like the book?”
“I loved it. It’s now my new favorite book!”
Now that I am retired and can’t even substitute teach anynore, I don’t have that excitement of greeting them and never knowing what I’m going to get in return. But i am saying hello to everyone I meet on the walking path. And sometimes I get an answer.
“Hey, I like your beard! You really need to be wearing a red hat this time of year.”
“Oh, I know… I get confused with him all the time around Christmas. And I don’t even own any flying reindeer.”
Catch a Falling Star 
Mickey, this was always appreciated when my teachers did it for us. Keith
I am sure it made most of the teachers happier too.