Illustration of a teen with a white tshirt and blue jeans
Illustrations by Alex Nabaum
Fiction,

First-Day Fly

Tomorrow is the first day of school, and you know you are going to be...

By Jason Reynolds
From the September 2023 Issue

Learning Objective: to analyze a character in a work of short fiction

Complexity Factors
  • Purpose
    This story describes a boy preparing his outfit for the first day of school while exploring themes of self-expression, self-confidence, and family relationships.
  • Structure
    The story is written in second person and is chronological.
  • Language Conventionality and Clarity
    Vocabulary: Contains several words students may find unfamiliar, such as starch, billow, and dress rehearsal. Conventionality: The story reads like a poem. It is packed with figurative language and the author puts a strong emphasis on rhythm. Sometimes the author uses formatting that is not conventional for prose, playing with line breaks and spacing the way a poet does. At the same time, the language is colloquial and contains slang terms that some readers may not be familiar with.
  • Knowledge Demands
    The story contains references to a protractor, ironing, hypotenuses, and department store underwear departments.
Lexile: 860L
Featured Skill: Character,
Other Key Skills: point of view, author’s craft, literary devices
Common Core Standards
  • Anchor Standards
    R.1, R.2, R.3, R.4, R.5, R.6, W.2, SL.1, L.4, L.5, L.6
  • Grade 6
    RL.6.1, RL.6.2, RL.6.3, RL.6.4, RL.6.5, RL.6.6, W.6.2, L.6.5, L.6.6
  • Grade 7
    RL.7.1, RL.7.2, RL.7.3, RL.7.4, RL.7.5, RL.7.6, W.7.2, L.7.5, L.7.6
  • Grade 8
    RL.8.1, RL.8.2, RL.8.3, RL.8.4, RL.8.5, RL.8.6, W.8.2, L.8.5, L.8.6
TEKS Standards
  • Grades 6, 7, 8
    1c, 2a, 2b, 3, 4, 5e, 5f, 5g, 6b, 6c, 6d, 6e, 6f, 6g, 6h, 7a, 7b, 7d, 8a, 9b, 9c, 9d, 9e, 9f, 11b

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AS YOU READ

Think about what gives the main character confidence.

Directions

Read the story through one time. Then read it again, clicking on the phrases in blue to answer the questions as you go. 

There are only two days that matter to you. Two days that count. Your birthday, which is like a million days away, and tomorrow, which is the first day of school. And normally you don’t like school. Because there’s not much to like about it. The hallways always smell funny, and they don’t do nothing but lead you to teachers. And teachers don’t do nothing but remind you that they already got their education and now it’s time for you to get yours right before telling you to head back down the hallway to the principal’s office because you can’t stop talking about how Thomas Baker stepped on your foot with his dirty boots and turned your sneaker into a construction site. Thomas Baker got feet like surfboards. But he don’t surf to school. He apparently hikes through a forest that you’ve never seen around here. Hikes through ditches or something. Swamps, maybe. Anyway, you weren’t even talking to no one about him. You were just murmuring Big Foot Baker under your breath, bending over at your desk, licking your thumb and scrubbing the brown crust from your babies, scratching the dirt off gently with your nail just like how your mother wipes sleep from your eyes on the mornings you’re too lazy to wash your face. You know this is how you bring things back to life. But when it doesn’t work, when Thomas Baker’s boot mud proves itself to be gold medal boot mud, you decide to attack it with one of the pointy corners of a protractor.  

How were you supposed to know geometry is apparently more important than your drip? How were you supposed to hear anything Mrs. Montgomery had to say about triangles and diameters and whatever a hypotenuse is when your sneakers are practically bleeding to death? Bleeding! I mean, can’t she see what kind of stress you’re under, dealing with such an emergency while also trying to figure out how to use a protractor (who knows how to use a protractor?) and then the rush of hallelujah that comes over you once you realize the protractor is the answer to really scraping the leather clean (that’s how you use a protractor). Ain’t she ever had her fresh ruined? Had her fit downgraded and dismissed because some little boy ain’t learned how to use his grown man feet yet? Ain’t she ever been through this kind of pain? Maybe she has, but she’s forgotten. So Mrs. Montgomery sends you to the principal’s office. Again. And everybody moos like cows because they’re all immature. Again. And you suck your teeth, but in a mature way.

And that’s school.

Well, that’s school every day after the first day. But tomorrow is the first day. A day that counts. And you are ready for it. Ready. Your older brother has finally given you his favorite pair of jeans, which happens to be your favorite pair of jeans, but when you’ve asked to borrow them in the past, he’s always told you no and he’s always said it with bite and growl. Told you they already broken in. Told you the knees are perfect, and you might step in wild and rip the knee from a slash to a hole, and a hole ain’t fly. But now he can’t fit them, so now he’s told you yes. Yes. You can’t wait. A week ago, you turned them inside out, washed them in cold water, hung them over the shower rod to drip dry because the dryer would turn them into tights. And ain’t nothing wrong with tights, but they’d surely guarantee a hole. Somewhere. In the wrong place. At the worst time.

You asked your mother to iron them because she’s the best ironer you’ve ever known. Princess Press. Iron Woman. Can turn wrinkled fabric into something like thinly sliced pieces of wood. She knows how to steam and starch a thing to life. Make it look newer than it looked when it was new. But she said she ain’t your maid and asked if you thought the reason she taught you to iron at 6 years old was so that she could keep doing it for you. You almost sucked your teeth, but didn’t, because you love your life and would hate to lose it before the first day of school over a pair of hand-me-down jeans. Instead, you set up the ironing board, put water in the iron, and got to work. First the left leg. You set it flat and press the iron to it and push the button that triggers the steam, causing it to billow out like the ghosts of wrinkles being set free. You have no idea what it’s doing—what the steam is really for—but you know this is what you do to make wrinkled things straight. This is ironing. Left leg, right leg. Back and forth across the fabric, steam steam steam. You’re careful not to put creases in the jeans because no one should crease their jeans. No one. Not you. Not your brother. Not Mr. Sheinklin, who, for some reason, never got the no-crease memo. Should’ve been a geometry teacher because his jeans always have the wrongest right angles, and probably some hypotenuses, too. But he don’t teach math at all. He teaches . . . you don’t actually know what he teaches. But you have him this year for homeroom, and you figure this is your chance to show him what a smooth pair of jeans supposed to look like. Denim like a calm lake, not a rolling river, or a sharp iceberg. Creases are for church pants. And you ain’t wearing church pants to school, even if Jesus asked you to.

When you finished ironing them, you hung the jeans across the chair in your room. It’s been a week. They’re still there. You haven’t touched them. Haven’t even moved the chair, except for a minute ago when you grabbed the plastic bag from the seat. Something you bought yesterday. Always a tricky experience, moving through the store, past the jewelry counter through the jungle of women’s underwear where everything hangs in single pieces, to the factory of men’s underwear where everything is folded and packaged like cotton marshmallows. You push a finger through the packaging, puncturing the transparent skin of it, ripping it open before finally pulling a shirt from the strange plastic cocoon housing three of the most beautiful butterflies ever. The white is blinding. You shake the shirt free from its fold, lines cutting through it, a cotton tic-tac-toe board. But, like jeans, T-shirts also can’t be creased. Especially not a fresh white. They’re supposed to look like this is the first time they’ve been worn, but not your first time ever wearing them, if that makes sense. It makes sense to you. So you gotta get rid of the lines. But not by using an iron. Because it’s still just a T-shirt. An undershirt, as your mother calls it. You don’t want to take it too seriously. So you have to take it really seriously. You put it on a hanger, and hang it on the shower rod, right where you hung the jeans to dry. You close the bathroom door, lock it. Turn on the water. Hot hot. Then, sit on the toilet (not like that) and wait.

And wait.

And wait. As steam fills the room, and the creases slowly soften and fall away. Until your brother bangs on the door. He has to go. You tell him you’re almost done. He tells you he can’t wait. But you know you just need five more minutes, but he tells you he can’t hold it. Then you hear another voice, a harder bang. This time it’s your mother and she’s telling you that water, like money, don’t grow on trees, so if you ain’t washing your body you need to cut the shower off unless you want to see steam turn into smoke, and you have no idea what that means but you know it would be foolish to find out. Even though,

even though,

e v e n t h o u g h 

she was the one who taught you the shower steam trick in the first place. Taught you how to make fresh look like you and not a first day of school costume. But she’s still your mother. So when she says turn the shower off, you turn the shower off. There’s so much steam you can barely see, but you know the shirt has to be at least close to creaseless by now. You open the door to find your brother bent in half. He’s angry but unable to speak. You know there’s a punch or something he’s saving for you, but you don’t have time to stress about it.

Because you still have to get your shoes together. Gotta unlace them, re-lace them, and make sure there’s absolutely no evidence of Big Foot Baker, make sure his smudge from last year is gone—gone gone—and the creases and wrinkles you’ve put in these shoes over the course of the last however many months it’s been since you got them on your birthday are at least clean, since they can’t be ironed or steamed out. You’ve cleaned them almost every day with toothbrush and toothpaste, rag and soap, and sometimes the sharp corner of a protractor, which is even more useful when it comes to picking rocks out the soles.

In your room, you stand in front of the mirror for the dress rehearsal. Because you can’t risk it on the day of. You have to run it through. Test it out. So you put the jeans on, pull them up and fasten them around your scrawny waist. They fit you how they used to fit your brother before he got grown. Before the knee slash became a thigh slash. You still got about an inch in the waist, and at least two inches waterfalling around your ankles—enough space to be comfortable. Enough space to wear them for a while if you take good care of them. Next the white tee goes on. Wrinkle-free, but not overdone. It looks like you ain’t trying too hard to be cool. To be fresh. You just are because you are. And then, the sneakers. The shoes. The crowns of the feet. Not new, but faithful and dependable when it comes to your fly. Yeah. And you look in the mirror. Like, yeah. And you think. Yeah. You fly. I’m fly. Gon’ be fly tomorrow. Gon’ put some fresh in that funky hallway. On the first day. A day that counts. Again. And you are ready for it. Again. You, newer than you looked when you were new. And tomorrow, the excitement in the morning will somehow keep you from washing your face. And you will suck your teeth as your mother shakes her head, licks her thumb to clean crust from your eyes. Because that’s how you bring things back to life


Again.

You.


Smile. Because. 

You.


know. You               know

You.


               Will be.

               Fly.    So    fly.


The End.

“First-Day Fly” from Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood, edited by Kwame Mbalia, copyright © 2021 by Kwame Mbalia. Used by permission of Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Icon of a lightbulb

Writing Prompt

In a short essay, compare your feelings about the first day of school to the feelings the main character of “First-Day Fly” has about the first day of school. 

This story was originally published in the September 2023 issue.

video (1)
Audio ()
Activities (9)
Preparing to Read
Reading and Discussing
Skill-Building Activities
Quizzes (1)
Answer Key (1)
video (1)
Audio ()
Activities (9)
Preparing to Read
Reading and Discussing
Skill-Building Activities
Quizzes (1)
Answer Key (1)
Step-by-Step Lesson Plan

Close Reading, Critical Thinking, Skill Building

Download the Lesson Plan

Table of Contents

1. Prepare to Read

2. Read and Discuss

3. Write About It: Character

4. Writing Spotlight: Second-Person Point of View

5. Connected Reading

Essential Questions: How can we express ourselves through our appearance? What influences our choices about how we present ourselves—our clothing, hairstyles, etc.? What is a new beginning?

1. PREPARE TO READ (15 MINUTES)

Do Now: Journal and Discuss (5 minutes)

  • Project the following on your whiteboard for students to respond to in their writing journals or on a sheet of paper: 
    • Write about the first day of school. Respond to as many of the questions below as you like:
      • Is the first day of school a big deal for you? 
      • How do you feel in the days leading up to the first day of school and why? 
      • Did the first day of school this year turn out the way you were expecting or hoping? 
      • Do you do anything special on the first day of school?
      • Is there any first day of school from your past that sticks out in your memory? Why?
      • Is there anything else you want to say about the first day of school?
  • Invite volunteers to share their responses. 

Preview Vocabulary (10 minutes)

  • Project the Google Slides version of Vocabulary Definitions and Practice on your whiteboard. Review the definitions and complete the activity as a class. Highlighted words: billow, downgraded, dress rehearsal, starch. Audio pronunciations of the words and a read-aloud of the definitions are embedded on the slides. Optionally, print the PDF version or share the slideshow link directly to your LMS and have students preview the words and complete the activity independently before class.

2. READ AND DISCUSS (45 MINUTES)

  • Read the As You Read box on page 27 or at the top of the digital story page.
  • Watch the author read-aloud video, in which Jason Reynolds reads “First-Day Fly” to Scope readers.
  • Point out the directions at the top of the column on the far-right side of page 27 and read them aloud to your students. 
  • Direct students to read the story independently (optionally, listening to the audio read-aloud as they read), pausing to discuss the close-reading questions that appear in the margins of the print magazine or by clicking on the bolded words on the digital story page. Have students record their answers in their own document or on the Close-Reading and Critical-Thinking activity located in the Resources tab. 


Close-Reading Questions (30 minutes)

  1. Describe the point of view from which the story is told. Who is the “you” the narrator is addressing? (point of view) The story is told from the second-person point of view. When the narrator says “you,” the narrator is speaking to the main character. In other words, the narrator is speaking as though the main character is the reader. In addition, the narrator has knowledge of the main character’s thoughts and feelings as well as his actions—that’s how the narrator is able to say things like “There are only two days that matter to you” and “You almost sucked your teeth, but didn’t, because you love your life and would hate to lose it before the first day of school over a pair of hand-me-down jeans.”
  2. How does the main character feel about his shoes? How do you know? (character) The main character’s shoes are very important to him, and he takes great pride in keeping them spotless. This is revealed through what happened the day Thomas “Big Foot” Baker stepped on the shoes. For one thing, the main character was sent to the principal’s office because he couldn’t stop talking about how Big Foot Baker got his sneakers muddy. Plus, the main character put a lot of effort into removing the mud from his “babies,” as he thinks of them. What’s more, he was distracted during math class by the “emergency” of his sneakers “practically bleeding to death.” The main character’s pride in his sneakers is further revealed as he prepares them for the first day of school. He has, the narrator says, cleaned the sneakers “almost every day with toothbrush and toothpaste, rag and soap, and sometimes the sharp corner of a protractor.”
  3. How does the main character feel about school? Why? (character) The main character seems to find school kind of annoying. It tries his patience. He seems to have trouble prioritizing learning—as his teachers want him to do—over his personal concerns (like the dirt on his shoes), and he is often sent to the principal’s office. He feels like the teachers don’t understand him. He also finds the other kids immature. 
  4. How does author Jason Reynolds make a topic that could be pretty boring—ironing—fun and interesting? (author’s craft) Reynolds makes the topic of ironing fun and interesting through fabulous similes and sensory details, and also by letting the reader in on the meandering thoughts that go through the boy’s head as he irons his jeans. Reynolds starts with some playful, entertaining nicknames to help you understand the boy’s mom’s ironing skills, calling her Princess Press and Iron Woman. He uses a simile to help you imagine exactly what clothes look like after she’s ironed them, writing that she turns fabric into “something like thinly sliced pieces of wood.” Reynolds then reveals something about the personality of the boy’s mother and their relationship, when he writes that she didn’t teach him to iron when he was 6 so that she could keep doing it for him. Reynolds uses another surprising and delightful simile to describe ironing itself: “You set it flat and press the iron to it and push the button that triggers the steam, causing it to billow out like the ghosts of wrinkles being set free.” The reflections on Mr. Sheinklin and his creased pants are funny and interesting, and there’s another evocative simile near the end of the paragraph—“denim like a calm lake”—that helps you understand not just the appearance of the ironed jeans, but the peaceful feeling they impart. The paragraph ends on a humorous note about not wearing church pants to school “even if Jesus asked you to.” 
  5. Why might the author have decided to present the three “even though”s this way? (author’s craft) The author likely presented the three “even though”s in this unconventional format to help convey the main character's thoughts. He thinks “even though” . . . and then he lingers on the thought . . . and then he lingers on it even longer. In other words, the arrangement of the words and the way the third “even though” is combined into one word with the letters spaced out causes the reader to hear those words a certain way in their mind: The first “even though” has no special emphasis, then there’s a pause; the second “even though” has more emphasis, then there’s another pause; the last “even though” is slow and a little stretched out, with a strong emphasis. All of this helps the reader understand that when the line concludes with “she was the one who taught you the shower steam trick in the first place,” this is an exasperating thought for the boy. His mom taught him the shower trick, and now she is criticizing him for using it! 
  6. How does the main character feel at the end of the story? Why does he feel this way? (character) At the end of the story, the boy feels confident, proud, self-assured, optimistic, full of energy—and ready for the first day of school. (In other words, he feels fly.) He feels this way because his outfit for the first day of school is, in his mind, perfect. His shoes are spotless, his tee is exactly the way he wants it, his jeans are ironed to the perfect smoothness—and this gives him great confidence. It’s as though the perfection of his appearance has sunken in, making him feel as fly on the inside as he is on the outside.
  • Ask students if they think there is anything poem-like about “First-Day Fly,” and if so, what. Students may mention the “even though”s that are set apart from the rest of the text and the lines written in verse at the end of the story. These lines are a great place to start—but what about the rest of the story? Let students know that if the story seems particularly poetic, it is likely because Reynolds uses a lot of figurative language and other literary devices often used in poetry. Project Literary Devices in “First-Day Fly” on your whiteboard. Read the slides and answer the questions as a class. Optionally, print out the Literary Devices Scavenger Hunt, a chart where students can record the devices they find on their own before you discuss them as a class.
  • As a class, discuss the following questions.

Critical-Thinking Questions (5 minutes)

  1. Do you think that the way we dress and present ourselves can affect the way we feel? What about the opposite—can the way we feel affect the way we dress and present ourselves? Do either or both of these things happen in the story? Explain your responses. Answers will vary, but students will likely answer that both things can occur: The way we dress can affect the way we feel (e.g., wearing something fancy can make an occasion feel more special, dressing casually can help us feel relaxed, wearing clothes that feel like “you” can give you a sense of comfort or confidence), and the way we feel can affect the choices we make about what to wear (e.g., if you’re feeling sad, you might wear dark colors; if you’re feeling joyful, you might wear something bright). In the story, both things seem to happen. The main character chooses his outfit for the first day of school to fit how special that day feels to him, but also, the outfit he chooses, with every detail just right, gives him a sense of confidence.
  2. Why might the first day of school be such an important day to the main character? Do you think it’s an important day for a lot of students? Explain. Answers will vary. Students may offer that for the main character—as for many students—the first day is important because it feels like an opportunity for a fresh start, or because it seems like an opportunity to set the tone for the rest of the school year, or because it’s a time when you see people you haven’t seen all summer, or because you are starting new classes with new teachers and new classmates, and there is something exciting but also a little scary about starting something new.

3. WRITE ABOUT IT: CHARACTER (45 MINUTES)

  • Have students complete the Featured Skill Activity: Character. This activity prepares them to respond to the writing prompt on page 29 in the printed magazine and at the bottom of the digital story page:

In a short essay, compare your feelings about the first day of school to the feelings the main character of “First-Day Fly” has about the first day of school.

  • Alternatively, have students choose a task from the Choice Board, a menu of alternate culminating tasks. (Our Choice Board options include the writing prompt from the magazine, differentiated versions of the writing prompt, and additional creative ways for students to demonstrate their understanding of a story or an article.)

4. WRITING SPOTLIGHT: SECOND-PERSON POINT OF VIEW (15 minutes)

  • Project the Writing Spotlight activity, available in the Resources Tab, on your whiteboard for a minilesson on writing in second-person point of view, using mentor sentences from the article. Read Slides 1, 2, and 3 as a class. 

  • Have students complete the You Try It on Slide 4 on their own. Then ask volunteers to share their sentences.

CONNECTED READING

Connected readings from the Scope Archives about the role that clothing can play in our lives:

Text-to-Speech