Anne Shirley’s first day teaching at Avonlea school tests the difference between the ideal teacher she has prepared to be and the uncertain novice she feels herself to be. The day unfolds through forgotten words, awkward discipline, and fatigue, but ends with a small gift from Paul Irving that renews her hope. It also establishes a lasting purpose in her work: even when Anthony Pye rejects her kindness, Anne intends to keep trying.

Arrival and Forgotten Preparation

On the morning of her first day, Anne walks the Birch Path without noticing its beauty, absorbed by the prospect of facing her pupils. The classroom is quiet when she arrives; the children, trained by the preceding teacher to be in their places, sit in prim rows with bright, inquisitive faces. Anne hangs up her hat and tries to conceal her trembling.

She has spent the previous night composing and memorizing an opening speech about mutual help and earnest striving after knowledge. Although she had revised it with care, when she stands before the class she cannot recall a word. What feels like a year to her lasts about ten seconds. She asks the children to take their Testaments, then sits down as the opening rustle of desk lids gives her cover to gather her thoughts. The carefully prepared speech yields to the practical demands of the schoolroom before the day has properly begun.

A Room of Familiar Faces and New Possibilities

Most of the pupils are known to Anne, but the primer class and ten newcomers to Avonlea draw her particular interest. Their futures are not yet familiar to her, and she finds it thrilling to imagine that one of them might be a genius. Her attention settles especially on two boys: Anthony Pye, alone at a corner desk, and Paul Irving, seated at the front.

Anthony’s dark, sullen face and hostile stare prompt Anne to decide at once that she will win his affection. Paul makes a different first impression. When their eyes meet, Anne feels that she has found someone unlike the other children, with a soul subtly akin to her own. Paul is ten, though he looks younger; his grave expression gives way to a spontaneous smile when Anne smiles at him. Before either has spoken, they have, in the narrator’s description, become fast friends.

The class also presents Anne with the variety of circumstances behind its orderly rows. Among the newcomers are children whose families have recently moved into the district, including a tall, awkward girl who is so prone to stumbling that the other scholars commemorate her rare successful walk down the aisle on the porch wall. The pupils are not merely a class to be managed: Anne is already observing their differences and imagining the possibilities each may hold.

The Work of the Schoolroom

The day passes so mechanically that Anne can scarcely remember it afterward. She hears classes, works sums, and sets copies, feeling almost as if someone else were teaching in her place. The children behave reasonably well, but two incidents require discipline, each revealing a different limit to her early authority.

Morley Andrews is caught driving a pair of trained crickets in the aisle. Anne makes him stand on the platform for an hour and confiscates the insects. On her way home she releases them in Violet Vale, but Morley believes for the rest of his life that she took them home to amuse herself. Even a decision meant to end the disruption leaves room for a pupil’s mistaken interpretation.

Anthony’s misconduct is more personal: he pours the last of the water from his slate bottle down the back of Aurelia Clay’s neck. Anne keeps him in at recess and explains that gentlemen do not pour water down ladies’ necks. She tells him she wants her boys to be gentlemen, offering the lesson kindly. Anthony remains unmoved, listens in silence, and whistles scornfully as he leaves. Anne is disappointed, but she counters it with the thought that winning a Pye’s affection will take time. Though she doubts whether some Pyes have any affection to win, she continues to hope that Anthony’s sullenness conceals a better nature.

Paul’s Gift and a Renewed Purpose

When the pupils have gone, Anne sinks wearily into her chair. Her head aches, and she feels discouraged, even though nothing disastrous has happened. Tiredness makes the prospect of teaching every day for decades seem terrible; she cannot decide whether to cry immediately or wait until she is safely home.

Paul finds her by the Birch Path and offers a cluster of wild orchids, called rice lilies by the children, gathered in Fred Wright’s field. He has come back to give them to her because he thinks she would like them and because he likes her. Anne accepts the flowers, and the simple gesture lifts the weariness and discouragement that had gathered around her. She walks home more lightly, the orchids accompanying her as a reminder that the day has reached someone.

Asked by Marilla Cuthbert how the day went, Anne cannot yet judge it clearly. Her thoughts feel too stirred up, she says, to know what she has accomplished, except that she has taught Cliffie Wright that A is A. She nevertheless sees even that elementary lesson as the beginning of a path that might lead to great literature. Her reply joins the smallest measurable achievement to the larger promise she sees in education.

Resistance, Patience, and the Meaning of the Day

Rachel Lynde later reports that the children liked their new teacher, with Anthony the exception. He has dismissed Anne as no good, like all girl teachers. Rather than take his judgment as final, Anne quietly declares her intention to make him like her, trusting that patience and kindness will win him over. Her resolve echoes the morning’s first impulse to win his affection, but the day has given that intention a concrete test: a gentle lecture failed, and she will have to persist beyond it.

The day’s significance lies less in a smooth first performance than in Anne’s willingness to keep investing in pupils whose responses differ. The forgotten speech and mechanical routine expose her vulnerability; the crickets and water bottle demand practical decisions; Anthony’s contempt resists an easy victory. Against those frustrations, Paul’s orchids offer an immediate, personal affirmation. Anne ends the day without certainty that she likes teaching, but with renewed hope and a chosen method for the difficult work ahead: to meet resistance with patience and kindness.